The aims of the Housing Minister, Michael Gove which he honestly explained in his historic speech at the RIBA, 19th December 2023 directly conflict with his other towering aim,: to remove the Tory back bench revolt led by Theresa Villiers MP against mandatory housing numbers. He wants local councils to willingly accept the housing and other local infrastructure that the economy needs to meet its growth and productivity expectations but he is also taking threatening steps against councils who do not agree to provide their bit. He is in a jam. Few councils in high growth areas like spatial change. Which way is he to turn with a general election pending? Local Tory councillors themselves prefer no change. Asking them to become leaders of local change sounds unrealistic. But, in my opinion, it is possible overtime with broad support, communal resident incentives, and shrewd judgement.
Consider this: the latest offensive from his office is to threaten seven local councils with intervention for failing to submit a local plan for twenty years. Each is now required, within 12 weeks of his speech to submit a timetable to comply, failing which he will intervene. His argument is the omission leaves their areas vulnerable to speculative development. This is true, and an old chestnut. So far it has failed to produce local support.. Whether the latest threat to local democrats will carry the necessary punch is doubtful. He may need it to be backed up by the High Court judge in the Wrexham case.The threat of imprisonment of local councillors worked there last month, but is this local democracy? As a strategy to breed local support it reverses normal political common-sense.We can assume the councillors were elected with the support of their local residents, so he is starting hostilities against .a brawny rival.
Despite this awkward predicament the Minister is right. To grow prosperity, and productivity on the one hand; make houses available at fair prices for the next generation; meet zero-carbon thresholds and protect England’s green and pleasant land, we need planned spatial change ( more in some areas, less in other areas). Doing it by default, haphazardly on a speculative, commercially led not community led basis without capturing the uplift in value change releases is senseless., But doing it without local support is equally senseless. Local support is the oxygen without which best on class spatial change locally will not happen. New urban despoliation, the A & E of place making, or the dunce in class will be the result. Which of course explains why so many local residents and local conservationists are passionately against change near them. For decades they have seen the dunces, and do not want more of them.
If the Minister can find a formula that wins local support, starting with Cambridge, showing how existing communities can become beneficiaries of spatial change his reputation for thinking competence will be sky high. The reverse is too depressing to spell out yet again; we have seen it everywhere in the south of England since the the sixties ended and the seventies started. Working together, across the divide, locally and in Westminster is the way to add value, following the examples and the principles listed here before- the landed estates urban successes in creating value over generations; the Commission for New Towns financial, spatial and governance successes, all well illustrated by the Crown Estates rural successes at Poundbury.
Ian Campbell
4 January 2024
