Policy Exchange has produced a heartening new report (The Property Owning Democracy,; James Vitali) which seeks to understand and then explain current housing policy failure. It is endorsed by several Conservative MP’s, including Ministers, which matters. . As as step towards educating open market , dyed-in-wool ideological MP’s who still cannot understand why four decades of building land supply controls has failed, the report is a good first step. Shame the author too does not ‘get it’. If (regardless of free market claims) you ration for decades the supply of a key component (building land) and give control over the future supply of this land to local people with their own self-serving agenda, it is plain the final product (new homes) will become eventually become scarce and expensive.
Some of the steps advocated by the author, Dr Vitali will I agree increase homes supply on the margin. By involving local activists at charrettes might help win local support too. And what will be the result of this new free for all within the designated areas? More spatial and density uncertainty. New supply will be too little. And it will be too late. The policy will be once again provide spatially haphazard housing locations within the growth envelopes. meaning the initial local support will quickly leak away as opportunists with big purses and local vested interests dominate proceeding legitimately or illegitimately and honest-to-goodness local activists become disillusioned. . If you want to stop land owners, option hoarders, so called strategic land buyers playing the game according to this new set of PE rules local councils must, with their community led , not commercially led agendas first become the master planners of their areas. And not just in the development corporations areas he proposes, welcome as they will be.
.To do this with leverage sufficient to face up to the private sector vested interests all local communities must first become land owners or controllers of their growth locations. It needs shrewd leadership, long term consistent spatial policies and the ability to think though and win support for their local vision for the next two generations. How? Look at, and adapt the techniques of the landed estates to see how this is done using open market principles and long term generational strategies. Change for the better then becomes the norm. Local support for change turns positive.
Of course if not making future homes affordable for home owners is hidden away and no longer the required outcome, and all that matters is winning a short term dose of local support for new homes then go with this Policy Exchange solution. It is about as long sighted as Brexit. The market needs certainty. But first it needs to know whose agenda will call the shots. The local community’s social and spatial agenda, or the vested interests own commercial agenda? Please revise the report and re-issue when this paramount distinction is understood.
Ian Campbell
12 December 2023
