Sunak is faint-hearted. He is likely to try and avoid the housing issue as it’s too contentious. An incoherent Tory housing policy will continue. Ex-Minister for the environment says the PM is simply uninterested.
The decision announced today by Lord Zac Goldsmith, to quit his environmental ministerial role, saying the Prime Minister is ‘simply uninterested’ in the issue tends to confirm growing suspicions the PM fails to understand the English housing crisis too. Will this indifference change as the election approaches?
Recently Sunak responded to Sir Keir Starmer’s promise to be in the side of builders not blockers by saying the Tories will not build houses on green spaces. Taken literally, to include all undeveloped, unprotected white land this promise is a bummer. There is very little brownfield land in places where demand is greatest and in many urban areas there is local opposition to building upwards. Fortunately for him the media missed his own goal. But the indicators are worrying.
Earlier this year in his ConservativeHome interview with Andrew Gibson first he said it is about striking a balance, which is true. Then he added it is about releasing enough brownfield sites, which is not true. Brownfield sites are a comforting myth for blinkered Nimby’s. What is clear is that Sunak is fainted-hearted if faced with the prospect of agitation from Tory activists opposed to new homes near them.
Equally worrying we need to remember the PM announced last November the government policy is is to adopt a brownfield first policy. Perhaps he had just read for the first time the CPRE November 2021 report Recycling our land: state of brownfield 2021, whose opening paragraph shocked me ( see blog 29 January 2023, Solution: brownfield land?). It contains the startling claim ‘Our plentiful supply of brownfield land…..’ which I checked out. CPRE claim there was, in 2021, 26,256 ha of brownfield in England. Independently checking England’s land area on gov.uk Official Statistics confirmed a land area of 13,046,000 ha, Brownfield land makes up one fifth of one percent of the total land area. Is this ‘plentiful’? What is it? Space above stations or road junctions. I do not know. Where is it? This matters too.
So if we accept Lord Goldsmith’s assessment, where are the Conservatives going on housing? Is it nowhere? Their boss does not understand the facts, about land supply. He is influenced by his noisy, high profile activists. The evidence suggests left to his own preferences he will ignore a difficult domestic issue like housing, in the hope it will go away. No sign of leadership here. No signs of foresight either,. What a shame, as there is a housing opportunity waiting for whichever party can show what co-operation and and a commitment to local priorities can achieve. Think two generations; think landed estates; think Commission for New Towns. Then think … young anger.
Ian Campbell
30 June 2023
