Watching and reading BBC News online this morning (23 October, ‘The Peckham primary school where most children are homeless’) shows an article by Henry Low. It dismayed me. It was not the worrying but inevitable truth summed up in their strapline above, but the audacious claim in it by a government minister. Felicity Buchan, the minister for housing and homelessness announcement that “Everyone has a right to a safe and decent place to call home. That’s why we have set out an ambitious long-term housing plan to build the homes that Britain needs.” I almost choked on my toast. The truth is precisely the opposite. How can we trust a government whose spokesperson denies reality. It is time to review the facts that decide the future supply of new homes.
One, this government does not have a long term plan to build the homes Britain needs. To say it has a plan is a fairy story. Where is it?
Second, strategic planning for the supply of new housing. was abolished by the Conservatives in 2011. Since then no national or regional housing plan has existed.
Three, if the Minister claims that levelling up jingle is an ambitious long-term plan to build houses in the places where they are most needed, she needs to put her finger on the map and show us precisely where all the housing will be located. That is what a spatial plan means. . She will not do it. Because she knows local residents will immediately have a field day in opposition. And she knows the total number of homes proposed in rural local plans for up to 15 years ahead are insufficient; in the high demand locations are totally inadequate; and in many urban areas are undeliverable whilst local residents oppose densification and new high rise..
Four, she knows that claims to build lots of new homes in low demand locations like the midlands and the north are a smoke-screen. Housing demand follows tomorrows jobs, and these will be located in the south regardless of government hopes: Cambridge, Oxford, Reading, Thames Valley are convincing examples. Talk to the spatial experts who operate in these markets.
Five, building lots of new homes in areas of high demand on brownfield sites is a myth. These locations are few, and even less if you apply a normal, market led viability test. Such land can sometimes be a liability, not an asset. Who pays then?
Six, her government has one promising plan, better described as a sketch for a vision of major growth around Cambridge. Which so far as it goes is an encouraging step, but the concept barely exists even as an esquisse. . Where is the local support which they say is vital? How does the Cambridge sketch fit into a national and regional plan for the adjoining subregions? Is there a delivery vehicle in place? Is it viable, which means are they buying the land at market value of at existing use/agricultural value?
Seven, the Minster says they have an ambitious long-term plan. So there is an all important question. Have the Conservatives obtained endorsement of the plan from Labour and the Liberal Democrats locally and nationally? Without their endorsement no plan is long-term nor deliverable. Instead it is a concoction of ingredients that they puzzle how to assemble.
The inability to deliver is dire but at least the government now claims to have a plan. This evidently small step matters. A decade ago, its utterance was banned. Is the change in language a tiny light in a very long tunnel? What is needed is an endorsement of a national growth plan from the opposition parties, and then our children might have some reason to hope.
Ian Campbell
23 October 2023
