Local elections two weeks ago have fired up the planning debate. This is good news. For too long both main parties turned their back on housing policy. And the Liberal Democrats propensity to jump into the void created by local frustration explains why. Let’s just get into power, is their motto. Best not to ask why.
The question is this: are local councils able to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of their residents? This is not easy, as there are so many as
orations, many often in conflict.
Assume the objective is to build lots more homes with local support.The good news is positive, yes it is possible. But local councils must learn to either to think, learn and then act like the landed estates of London over two hundred years, or like the new towns created by the Commission for New Towns, created after WW2.
To deliver homes and community facilities their residents will support, which is the core task, it is essential they take ownership of significant, long term building land in their areas. To achieve this novel, but vital change locally new leadership attitudes are needed. Embarking on control of key house building zones means each local council needs to introduce a sustainable spatial policy for their area. To deliver a sustainable spatial policy, the policy must be cross-border, cross-party and cross-generational. Local residents must decide where new homes go, not local land and property owners. It is this step which delivers local support. It is reversal of nearly 50 years of housing policy failure.
Think about it. The prevailing local plan system has very little local support, regardless of its content, regardless of the political party who promotes and endorses the local plan. Why? Because the plan is reactive. There is no council led spatial policy in most local plans. Instead the distribution of future housing in council areas simply responds to the haphazard call for sites system on which local plans rely. When the current local plan ends this daft distribution system must come to an end. It is a failure. It is a relic of post war policy failure.
In its place, local councils need a credible, one/two generational and potentially beautiful vision which can win local support. For example do local residents want their children and grandchildren to live in low density Poundbury or medium density Chelsea and Kensington or high density Mayfair? In addition, do they want lots of public open space, social amenities and London standard public transport, but restricted and more costly private car usage? Or do they want a re-run of traditional post war low density, suburban housing estates, whose sprawl makes travel reliant on cars? With too many confused opposition to any change groups, it looks as if this failed outcome may be the choice, by default.
If true, prospect is a worry. Another cycle of low density, car reliant suburbia is not sustainable nor climate friendly. The way forward means councils must go for the beautiful, medium and high density, low car usage option, even though completing all delivery phases may take one or two generations to complete. The first test is winning local support for the vision. The second test of success will be; do prices for the new homes carry a premium, when compared to similar homes in traditional local areas?
This community promoted spatial model needs to become the benchmark by which today’s political housing debate must be judged. The Conservatives are split on new housing. The Prime Minister does not understand housing. Housing Minister Rachel Maclean says unhelpfully her party will not trash our environment. Well, they have for decades in the Thames Valley. Michael Gove probably does understand the dilemma, but until the grown ups in his party return to power his hands are tied. So the Conservatives are best ignored for now. The Liberal Democrats do not have a housing policy. Which leaves Labour as the only realistic possibility to solve the current housing policy failure. But their weakness is an established tendency to ignore local vested interests without understanding the power for good and bad these interests can exercise at local level. Can Labour deliver this long term model, based on popular local support?
Sir Keir Starmer says Labour will enforce housing requirements on local areas in line with local need. But what happens if there is little or no local support? Returning, as Labour propose home ownership to 70% as part of its robust reforms to the planning system is merit worthy, but how will this happen, if local residents are opposed? Without thinking through how the market in housing land works there is a probability that Starmer will kick start another decade of stasis. If so, in reality next to nothing happens. Why? Because land owners and their bevy of highly paid advisers will shut up shop. They will wait until there is another change of government and with it a change of policy. As a technique to extract value, it works. But look at the environment outcome. Unexpected, unwanted, unloved blobs of suburbia popping up here and there, each resented by local residents, bringing no community wins bar a few road junctions and the like. Talk about blinkers. Talk about myopia. What a tragedy, post war housing policy is…. and will it change?
We face a general election. Which political party will take the initiative? Which party will recognise that on their own they can neither solve the homes crisis, nor on their own can they even start to solve it? Which party will put national duty ahead of narrow partisan loyalties? In my next post I will look in mote depth at the housing policy failures of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. It provides a useful insight into decades of housing policy failure.The RBWM happens to be where I first bought land for housing in the 1960’s!
Ian Campbell
24 May 2023
