Michael Gove’s speech on 19 December 2023 is laced with good intent. But fails two life or death tests: They are the delivery test and the politics test. Delivery polices built on sand, lacking foundations, ignoring market custom and powerful vested interests, or the indispensable role of time in creating premium values will result in another decade of stasis. And the politics is harder. Who calls the shots? Whose agenda takes precedence. Local support is the oxygen of delivery. No oxygen equals no delivery. Local residents resist. change near them as limpets cling on regardless of the tides. But economic growth and accelerating productivity demand spatial change. Without it sluggish growth continues. Gove’s commendable and naive aspirations for Cambridge will teach him lessons. By then another half generation of the ill-housed and the zero-carbon adherents will be disillusioned or homeless too.
The omissions in the Gove speech tell us what is not understood. The need for high profile cross-party political consensus in Westminster is where delivery starts. Without it stasis is more likely to continue. And the necessity to replace local humiliation ( see previous post; 28 December 2023) with local pride and local support are not understood either. If Labour win the general election on the basis of a locally consensual, not confrontational manifesto for delivering homes, power and energy, spatial realism and economic growth in partnership with local councils and also commit to replace coercion with co-operation, homeowners, tenants, local residents and local conservationists will all be happier.
Does the Housing Minister understand why Poundbury is a success despite its critics? I am glad he supports it. His interesting but disjointed ideas for major growth around Cambridge are not consistent, with the lessons from Poundbury although he thinks they are. The King.can tell him why Poundbury is creating value and why the government’s welcome vision for Cambridge is a project without an engine that can. deliver. Will the Cambridge development corporation be able to take control? This means becoming land controllers, land owners alongside development control powers. How will the local councils respond to fundamental changes in governance and in jurisdiction with their neighbours? . Without their local support major expansion at Cambridge is becalmed. Is there overwhelming local residents support? If not, as this is key, how will the support be obtained? And if this is the way forward for Cambridge, which it is, why not in other fast growth, high demand locations with plenty of unprotected white land, like most of the Thames Valley, north Hampshire and parts of Oxfordshire on West side of London?
The logic of Gove’s speech
”Because our vision for Cambridge is going to exemplify what it means to fall back in love with the future. It is going to set the standard for how we protect and preserve what matters ……”. Michael Gove, Housing Minister, @ RIBA. 19 Decemeber 2023
is we first need a national spatial plan. It will show all the protected areas where we cannot build according to national policy. What is left is where we can build if the market shows the demand is there. It is not difficult. I did an elementary version round London looking decades ahead in 1968. It was sufficient for my employers needs. If the Minister cannot do so, perhaps this is the opportunity for Labour? Ideally they need cross-party support within Westminster. If not possible , because the key to delivery is local support, they must find ways to win local support in Tory supporting areas, where most new homes will go. How can this achieved? The keys are timing, local community benefits, aesthetic designs which add value, viz. Poundbury, and possibly some early day financial gains for local households hosting new homes, funded by adjoining areas where no new homes will go because their countryside is protected. These wins can happen when the Cambridge model is mended and subsequently used elsewhere.
Roman Moore, architectural critic for the Evening Standard reminds us in the January/February 2024 issue of Prospect (Could Harold MacMillan solve today’s housing) that MacMillan said in 1951 housing is not a matter of conservatism or socialism, but a question of humanity. Will this be the name of the glue that brings us all together together again?
Ian Campbell
30 December 2023
