Launch (June 2024) A general election will take place on 4 July 2024. Despite several decades of housing policy failure in England the outlook for lots of new homes that are needed remains grim. Available grounds for believing any of the three main political parties have a deliverable housing policy, which is what all three want, are barren. To be blunt, housing policy has inflicted defeat on our political elite. On their own, the political parties cannot deliver. Frustration with decades of broken promises is hugh. But evidence of them coming together as a team, with a credible, deliverable solution, the all-important first step is vanishingly scarce. . There is a way forward. It requires two radical changes. With good faith, both changes are doable. First forging a political cross-party generational based alignment in Westminster and seeding this shift into thinking locally. Second directing local councils to become building land owners. (At little or no cost over a one/two decade cycle). This step is cannot be avoided. Councils must recover functional control of land uses at local level. Spanning a generation they are the culprits of calamitous land use policy errors. Past planning performance is feeble.Time for change. Time for local authorities to step up and take the leadership role they claim in their areas. It must be a proactive responsibility. Reactionary spatial policy has failed. . Councils longterm social, spatial and economic agenda must replace opportunistic , commercially based agenda of landowners and builders. The steps needed to create a ‘civic team’ approach are explained below. First the components on which the policy steps will rely are explained.
IN BRIEF Housing policy has failed despite all the main parties sharing the same objective: make homes affordable with local support. . A long-term, cross-party housing policy is needed. Local council land ownership can deliver local support if a ‘civic team’ approach is introduced, using time,, land costs will be minimal.
Conflict Local opposition to spatial change is widespread. .There is a deep rooted fracture in our planning system. Whose authority is paramount? The government whose legitimacy is they act in the national interest. Or local councillors who believe they retain the final say about what happens in their areas. They say local sovereignty is the essence of devolution. After all, they represent the wishes of local residents. Who live with the outcomes. And none of the Westminster parties disagrees. All the same, there is a basic problem. How does a government win local support for new homes, new jobs and new infrastructure if local residents do not want these changes? For example, Labour have audaciously stated that within twelve months of becoming the government they will identify locations for new towns. If we want once again to make new homes affordable new towns or urban extensions are essential. But who wants their town to be forced to become a host location for another council’s overspill housing needs? All hell will break out when the local media publishes the maps. But local opponents will be wrong. There are good reasons to become host locations.. And new private sector investment can be turned into a wonderful opportunity which adds value to local residents and their community. Sadly no-one explains these upsides to local residents.
IN BRIEF Resolving this power conflict , ‘whose authority is paramount’ , without alienating local residents is pivotal. This manifesto explains how it can be done..
Experience 22 months writing regular housing blogs ( https://makehousesaffordablein2084.com ) examining the causes of England’s housing deficit. 60+ years of property background. Estate management graduate in the sixties; , residential land buyer then too; Chartered surveyor (ret’d) and spatial researcher. Founder professional consultancy adviser on commercial and residential property investment policies in the overheated Thames Valley over nearly four decades. Market analyst studying the threats and opportunities housing policy barriers offer investors. Habitual commentator and reports author predicting spatial trends.. Participant in the Thames Valley local plan consultations. Rejecting decades of domestic housing policy. failure, I put forward this housing supply manifesto to overcome housing policy conflict in England. Housing Manifesto 2024 lists five steps for the incoming government to mend the broken planning system, invigorate market led economic growth throughout England, funding the needed infrastructure with land value capture and demonstrates how to deliver these changes with local support.
IN BRIEF Based on decades of tough private sector lessons this manifesto explain how to overcome the broken planning system and promote growth with local support. Long market experience confirms radical structural changes to the planning system are needed.
Why? My career in the property industry begets feelings of guilt and discomfort. I see the shameful impact. on young families faced by lavish house prices and rents. I bought my first, new three bed terraced house in London for £6650 in 1967. My generation has enjoyed good fortune. When I observe their impact today. on first time buyers prosperity, and diminished quality of life my chagrin grows. Seeing the continuing but avoidable damage spatial policy errors cause to our unique rural habitat is another sore. . There seems no end in sight. There is a way. Look at Germany after 1945, when the Allies and later the new West German government had to deal with large sections of their population with unique, but different needs. One group had lost their homes and those who had not. Another group was those who had lost their limbs or loved ones and those who had not. “Fairness here was not about making good past losses but about enabling future integration by promoting capital formation and economic recovery to help victims build their. lives”. (Out of the Darkness, The Germans 1942-2022; Frank Trentmann, 2023. p.169). There are gnawing parallels. The young are struggling. Here we had the Commission for New Towns. For a generation it delivered. Is my German match an exaggeration? For those paying unfair interest or rent costs, it is not. They face a lifetime of second rate, and expensive accommodation, for a lifetime. And it need not be.
IN BRIEF Spatial failure is a tragedy which continues. We can learn lessons from recent history.
Objective Is it too late.for local communities, adopting proven land ownership principles, to take back control of their areas, make home prices and rents affordable whilst also protecting, enhancing and opening up access to our restorative outdoor surroundings? Market experience shows it is possible to deliver conflicting spatial aspirations with vision, leadership and above all, sufficient time. Cross-party, cross- border local spatial partnerships with government backing have succeeded. . Spatial renaissance using light touch ownership expertise in all England’s. regions is the objective.
IN BRIEF It is not too late to make homes affordable if local councils take back spatial leadership of their areas. We can learn from housing policy errors in past decades here in England.
Affordable To make open market home prices and rents once again affordable throughout England will take ten plus years. Time is also needed to protect existing residents from local shocks and replace rampant price hopes with expectations of an ordinary rate of house price growth. My definition of affordable open market house prices is an earnings: price ratio of 3 or 3.5/1, the level prevailing in 1960’s, before land scarcity changed the rules. But new housing supply needs local support. It often scares residents. Attempts to bully communities with fast track new supply, will be resisted by host locations and lead to another generation of spatial mistakes. Sad to say, post war experience shows us that. policies which lack credence will be neutered by land owners. They wait for the policy U-turn which always follows.. Close cross-party policy alignment is an absolute necessity to shift mind-sets amongst land owners. The message, community spatial priorities come first, once in place, is surely not ideologically divisive? Delivering the message to local vested interests needs long term cross-party alignment. The prize is massive.
IN BRIEF Making homes affordable again will take years. Local voters concerns must be addressed. To ensure their co-operation land owners must be convinced new building land policies enjoy widespread local support and therefore are fixed for the very long term.
Timing A realistic estimate of the time needed to return home prices to fair-minded levels is 10/20 years. Perhaps 5/10 years is possible if land owners, their advisers and builders/developers (who control the current land supply pipeline) are convinced the long-term cross-party agreements advocated here will happen, but faster than expected. Once sentiment about new sources of high-end land supply is priced into market expectation’s, stocks of basic gummed up building land will be released speedily, reducing the power of builders to manipulate future housing prices.
IN BRIEF Less than 10/20 years to reverse housing land policies needs convincing cross-party and long term political alignments to be in place. Players in the land market are realists, and follow legitimate, financially driven aims.
Method To achieve the objective involves building record numbers of. new homes in the 2030’s and 2040’s; (500,000+ year on year). . They will built on building land sold by councils to the builders. Principally new towns, or urban extensions; sometimes new estates; sometimes more small scale haphazard (and gentle) densification mostly in urban and semi-rural areas, (often if smartly designed with little or no need for private car ownership) is the way to go. Before land buying starts regional masterplanning council policies, expertise and temporary funding resources for land buying without consent and land resales with consent must be in advanced preparation. Put simply a council led local spatial land ownership policy must be in place and ready to start. Buying land early pays dividends. The new homes will be to buy, or to rent, some for take up by social housing providers and most for sale by private sector builders. This manifesto makes no proposals about tenure quotas. Occupancy quotas are social policy, not spatial or market driven issues. . This manifesto is built on a location based time and place spatial substructure which will enable tenure policies to be planned with confidence, knowing the building land will be available on appropriate terms.
IN BRIEF Most new housing will be built in the 2030’s and 2040’s. Masterplanning and land management policies must first be set up and implemented before then by local councils. . This manifesto is a spatial means to build new homes, not a social programme to decide the occupants.
Policy Criteria. .Successful delivery of the homes will need one or two generations, assuming by then. the impacts of immigration and an ageing population have tailed off. The national spatial plan must have a long shelf life. So too must all the regional spatial plans. The duration of the latter must be sufficient to convince investors, local residents, vested interests, infrastructure suppliers, climate activists and local conservationists to accept the radical spatial policy change-over and future land management leadership roles transferred to local councils, advocated in this manifesto. . If these groups support a national spatial policy in Westminster, winning local support in 5/15 years ahead for council led spatial policy, the detailed location based changes needed locally will be far easier to implement. Therefore the new policies must either be cross-party or firmly aligned alongside shared political objectives in Westminster.
IN BRIEF Long term spatial plans are needed nationally and ,locally in order to win the essential local support, convince investors and be built on cross-party support in Whitehall.
Communities Spatial Control Local councils must take control of spatial policies in their areas. This not an appropriate role for the market. To take control councils will need one or two decades . Each area is different. Each has its own priorities. We must learn the mistakes of decades of housing policy failure. Local council development control and local plan powers based on the call for sites system has failed. .Opportunistic spatial land policy. led by developers, rightly angers local residents. The system is an irredeemable, broken model. Haphazard, unpopular housing locations in rural areas and friendless medium or high rise blocks in urban areas are the tangible evidence of spatial policy failure. . Spatial success in rural areas which create premium values like the Crown Estate’s Poundbury project in Dorchester or, in urban areas, the mega high premium values created in London by long term family estates following place stewardship principles and mansion block densities over generations (Grosvenor, Cadogan, Shaftesbury etc) are a convincing measure of what can be achieved by long term land owners without local council powers simply following a consistent long term, inter-generational based vision. Equally valid is the Commission for New Towns experience, which showed the financial benefits a long term land supply policy produces, despite their experience being limited to only one generation.
IN BRIEF Local councils must take control of future building land in their areas. Without this added area of governance they cannot follow the successful spatial and premium value policies of landed estates advocated here, so highly valued by their residents.
Spatial leadership. If local and regional councils, through development corporations partners can become spatial leaders in their own areas using these examples of private and public sector spatial success their local residents will in time own debt free community assets without Treasury funding, and the national economy will reap the benefits of faster growth. However there is a big but.
IN BRIEF Shrewd, far-sighted council leadership generates long term advantages.
Ownership of building land. Councils must over the next one or two decades also become the short term (10+/-years) owners of the 2030’s and 2040’s building land in their areas. If ownership or control of the next generation of building land is achieved well in advance of building needs at prevailing open market use value most or all of the land value capture their planning control powers release will revert to the their own local communities. Land value capture is potentially a very big win in high value areas. Look at the CNT at Milton. Keynes for an example. The financial risks of land ownership are low. Unused (for development) land can be re-sold if no longer part of a local masterplan. . In the meantime local councils or their development corporations will have become the building land owners or option holders. . In addition they, or their development corporation partners will possess development control powers. This one stop shop (planning powers and ownership power vested in one public body) for two generations will be able to renew economic growth locally and enhance rural and urban living locally in accordance with local priorities. Stated bluntly the prevailing private owners dependant call for sites system cannot deliver these outcomes. As a result we have excessive house prices caused by scarcity. Open countryside is eroded and soulless dormitory suburbs are built by jumble. These crude, unloved outcomes are avoidable failures.
IN BRIEF With planning control powers, and as owners of the next generation of building land, for the first time local councils will have the capability to give their local residents what they want, where they want, when they want in return for hosting more building
Subsidies, Sanctions, Hosts, and Overspill Should existing residents in host communities be offered financial incentives to accept a lot of new building near them? From where would the funding come to incentivise residents in host locations? How are target locations turned into welcome spots? Two options exist. One is a communications led policy, (see. below). Another is to seek the support of residents living in areas which must export their overspill housing needs. For example because a lot of their land is protected such. residents are an obvious funding source. They avoid the inconvenience of building disruption and enjoy the long term lifestyle and financial benefits of no change in their locality. Residents in overspill local areas which are not able or willing to build their share of the housing need, to ensure the burden is shared equally will become contributors to the host areas residents financial incentive packages. In return these export locations will enjoy the advantages of growth elsewhere and increasing prosperity without local change; reaping a value dividend for their areas whilst host households enjoy a rates holiday for those directly effected by construction.
IN BRIEF Locations that host lots of new building should receive financial. incentives from other locations which export their housing need.
Winning Hearts and Minds . Within the general population there is growing recognition that we need many more new homes. This positive mind-set helps a lot. But it is not sufficient. Widespread, articulate and enduring opposition to new homes, from local interests in the target locations is the stumbling block. Although there is inconsistency in these attitudes there is good reason the conflicts exist. Passionate local opposition emerges when precise spatial decisions are pending. Experience shows that local residents, most of all in high growth regions, invariable object to the selected location. While residents in the neighbourhood do not dispute the need for the new homes, they oppose the selected location, saying it is not suitable. Proof of unsuitability will be a wide variety of reasons and often these will be good reasons.Indeed in my experience often very good reasons. For example the site chosen is the result of an established but non-conforming use, such as a a local airfield in rural countryside, eg Ripley airfield at Wisley. Or it is the result of shrewd opportunistic owner choice, like Windsor and Maidenhead council decision to sell their town centre golf course to builders, justified by lack of alternative site options: Both spatial errors are classic symptoms of a broken planning system. They are the result of the haphazard call for sites system, which passes to the private sector decisions on where to, and where not to build, and when to build. . The spatial outcomes of a lottery based spatial system are rarely popular. How could it be otherwise? These spatial outcomes are driven by short lived, commercial priorities, not by long term community needs.
IN BRIEF Local leaders must be convinced. They must see advantages for their residents of the spatial choices they select.
Only option. In a spatial based, community led. building land system evolved on the principle that the local community knows and controls where to, and where not to build , blunder sites are not chosen. Local councils without the advantage. of land ownership powers or masterplanning skills needed to adopt a community led spatial policy (which directs new homes to appropriate locations) means local communities spatial priorities for the next generations’ new building cannot deliver the outcomes their residents want. This chasm explains the stasis that has become the defining attribute of the homes building industry in England since the late 1980’s; which is skilfully exploited by a handful of mass market builders in the meantime.
IN BRIEF Lack of local community control of building land will result in another decade of housing policy stasis.
Changing Direction Changing the planning system starts with re-winning support from local residents for local change. Change can be for the good. It can create premium values. Well designed new communities can be places where people want to go, to live and to work. Good design wins premium prices because those with money like what they see. Despite widespread contrary beliefs, change need not be for the worse. This positive mind-set change is especially necessary from those living in potential large scale host locations. The Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge Arc is one example. Local support is therefore essential. Right now in the Arc it is absent Ditto in Cambridge. These omissions are elementary failures How is this support to be obtained? How long will it take to replace negative. perceptions with positive and shrewd policy making visions which are understood and trusted by local residents? Who has to accept responsibility for turning local opposition into local support? As the.opinions of local council leaders and local MP’s about local spatial changes will carry far more weight with local residents than the views and advice of government ministers, it is local MP’s and local councillors across the political divide in host areas who must be convinced of the need for local spatial change. Key is local residents want and welcome the changes to come.
IN BRIEF Local support from host communities is momentous. Without it improvement is not possible. Examples of outstanding change, creating premium values exist, big and small, historic and new do exist. . Civic pride must replace ideological divide. Local residents must welcome the changes..
FIVE STEPS TO DELIVERY
Way ahead Achieving this mind-set change at local level is the objective. But a local enduring consensus in support of their area becoming a significant host location for new building will not be created unless there is first a political consensus put in place. in Westminster. . How can this first, but fundamental enabling mind-set switch in Westminster necessary to achieve party policy re alignment be created? There are five steps to include in the election manifesto.
IN BRIEF Changing local spatial attitudes depends.on Westminster’s political parties own housing policies being closely and lastingly aligned. Here are the five steps.
.Step 1. A manifesto statement:announcing the government must intially step back. Time to think radical is needed. To build a lot of new homes in the. places needed. to eventually make house prices and rents affordable with local support requires inter-generational spatial policy decisions. Briefly, where will the new homes go, or not go? So step 1 requires this commitment to a new, politically aligned approach. It means the creation, and adoption by the government, supported by opposition parties, of a national spatial plan. To hold water in the eyes of investors the national plan must eventually be accepted as bipartisan. Creating a national spatial plan is desk top initiative. New information is not required. It proposes import (host) and export ( and payment) locations. Yes, these steps will be contentious. They are the means of breaking decades of policy failure. Now is the time. Frustration with housing policy failure and weak growth is widespread. For inspiration look at West Germany in the 1950’s-1970’s and what it has achieved after WW2.
S1 Creating a cross-party national spatial plan. It becomes the catalyst for local spatial debate.. tt will be radical. It will be contentious. But it will work.
.Commentary on Step 1 Is this possible? We know where not to build. This is easy. Statutory protected and other special areas of value locally must be preserved. It follows all other locations without statutory protection will therefore be possible building locations in the future. Foundations for the new national spatial plan must built on shared party policy aims , eg. levelling up aspirations, and regional leadership devolution aims through mayors and combined authorities. There is some common ground here . Therefore it is the starting point. The new national spatial plan will recognise that beside identification of growth and no growth locations some other areas will be placed in the ‘possible’ growth category. The ‘possible’ category will be sub-divided later as the future use options of these unprotected areas are debated and decided locally. They used to be called white land areas. Government and opposition policy focus within Whitehall must be at national level. Westminster will identify the major growth regions far ahead. To promote and enable growth built on realistic delivery foundations the national focus will be on the needs of next generation of employers. Where will they want to go? Meeting their priorities is fundamental for long term national prosperity. Step 1 is therefore creating a long term national spatial plan with cross-party support in Westminster..
Step 2. The second step is equally crucial. Obtaining local support. Unlike Westminster based MP’s local residents live with the results of local change, whether good and bad. Local support from local councils throughout England for a national spatial plan is therefore pivotal. Without it local change on the scale needed will not happen regardless of governments claims. Step 2 is therefore creating regional spatial plans to identify change locations necessary to support the new national plan with cross-party long term support in Westminster and locally as well.
S2 Local support for a regional or local.spatial plan built on the spatial outcomes of the national spatial plan.
Commentary on Step 2. Aligning local visions for the long term with national growth objectives must be translated into long term spatial decisions for the selected growth locations. These actual locations will be chosen in two ways. Identifying future long term employment trends in all urban areas is the start point. Spatial boundaries will first be defined by travel to work catchment zones. And second, by knowing precisely where employers will want to go. Local property experts on the ground have this knowledge. Looking and predicting commercial space demands one or two generations ahead within an unregulated market is their expertise. This helpful, market power driven, but spatially constrained expertise is often overlooked. Experienced commercial letting agents understand and can foresee future employment markets in their areas. . For these practitioners it is not difficult. Finding the spatial experts is not difficult. The name of those who know the employment answers in their areas. will already be linked with the leading speculative employment projects locally. This is the way to identify, measure and predict with confidence tomorrow’s economic growth locations. It follows they will also become tomorrow’s housing demand locations.
(Major infrastructure suppliers will also need to design the future supply service networks required in the growth locations, whether transport, power, water or communications, These infrastructure elements and their visible outcomes, (pylons is one example) will be agreed with local support (and perhaps micro-incentives) within a statutory timetable).
Step 3. Because the current planning system does not work, it is not trusted. Housing policy failure over several decades is proof that change is necessary. The failure is that local residents do not like the planning outcomes they see. Houses in the wrong places, deemed to be ugly, congested roads, over crowded local services-in short local change without local benefit is the local perception. . Planning regulation, however many layers are added does not win local pride. Leaving spatial choices to local land owners and their building partners has failed. Step 3 means these spatial and timing powers must be transferred to local councils with their much wider, community based agenda looking generations ahead. Local plans will be replaced by long term regional plans. Local plans will then follow. Local councils will become owners, and sellers of future building land.The call for sites system will then end.
S3 Current local plans are not replaced. Local councils become owners of the next generation of house building land. They take back spatial responsibility for their areas future when current local plans end. In the meantime they become owners of building land for the next generations.
Commentary on Step 3. Therefore a crucial change in building land delivery responsibility will be introduced. It cannot happen overnight. Local councils or their development corporation partners will, at a fixed date in the future (10/20 years ahead, perhaps less) ) become the sellers of all at scale building land. Private land owners will sell to councils all at scale building land identified by councils at the open market current use value, including hope value if hope value exists, using their. CPO powers to assemble and deliver their local spatial plan. The sooner local councils start to take control of all their potential future building land the better, long before it us needed in order to capture all the uplift in value which their own planning policies will create the better. Doing so overcomes accusations of land requisition.
Further commentary on Step 3. Before the intermediate and long term periods arrive (20-60 years ahead) local plans must therefore be replaced with regional spatial plans. The new regional plans will enable councils or their development corporation partners to control the delivery of building land in timing terms; in locational terms; and in price terms because they are the building land owners. Spatial control through land ownership ensures local communities expectations are delivered. Development control and short life (up to 15 years ahead) local plan development control powers are not sufficient periods of time to identify and deliver local community wish lists. Following this new timetable the new plans will also be the means of 100% land value capture according to open market custom and RICS Red Book guidelines will transfer to the local community in a fair and equitable timescale.
Last comments on Step 3. In the short term, ie. until the end of the current local plan, or the 10/20 year timeframe ahead , the existing system of private sector spatial control will remain in force. Step 3 is therefore the mechanism and timetable for replacing the existing local plan with the new regional spatial plan and guidelines for local councils to become building land owners or controllers with options and conditional contracts. The date change will be decided locally to reflect the local plan expiry date.
. Step 4. After the fixed local change over date, local councils will become the sole source of at scale building land for sale in their areas. .(Defining at scale will be a local council decision). How is this transformation to happen? Local councils and where available their development corporation partners will decide their own land purchase spatial policy. and associated timetable. They will also decide the funding sources. As councils will be buying the land, or acquiring options using where appropriate CPO powers 10 to 20 years ahead of need, meaning its future use and timing of change is unsure) , they will have spatial and time leverage control of the land prices. If timing is canny at the moment of purchase hope value will negligible. (Hope value is extinguished by uncertainty). These. powers should be used, as owners will receive open market value (including hope value if it exists).. This matters. Financially landowners must be treated fairly and with generosity. By becoming the building land owners and remaining the body with development control powers, councils or. their development partners will be in a unique position to manage their buying policy for the benefit of their community. Their decisions will create or extinguish hope value. Each council will therefore face decisions based on how they want their local areas to change in decades ahead. Shrewd far sighted and enterprising councils will do better than councils who continue their myopic and growth resistant policies of the past decades. Step 4 will therefore require all local councils to decide their building land control policy. and the time table far in advance. Their local plan expiry date will be the start date of the new regional spatial plan.
S4. New regional spatial plans will eventually replace local plans. Dialogue on timing and spatial distribution of the change over between Westminster led national spatial plan and. local councils led regional spatial plan takes place building on the foundations of the national. spatial plan and the local plan expiry date.
Step 5 These policy changes are radical. Mind sets amongst local councillors and their officials will have to change. as councils themselves, take full responsibility for deciding long term spatial policies in their area. This may sound unrealistic after decades of spatial leadership initiated by land owners. It may even sound daunting.. The spatial expertise exists within the landed estates, in the property industry and existed in the now defunct Commission for New Towns. Such expertise it is substantial and needs to be used. The incentive for local councils to become spatial leaders will grow as their residents appreciate the menu of advantages the new roles will offer their areas. Established combined authorities and mayors will start with advantages. Other areas lacking a regional or cross border tradition of co-operation will see that if they do not quickly acquire spatial leadership skills their residents will replace them with other political leaders who see and understand the community opportunities their new spatial and timing powers offer. Step 5 therefore are the governance, , funding and resourcing initiatives local councils must adopt to introduce the new regional or local spatial long term at scale plan needed to deliver their part of the new national plan.
S5. According to an agreed fixed date programme local councils publish their local or regional spatial plan, programme for adoption and their long term land control programme guidelines.
Summary.
Housing Manifesto 2024 recognises the existing planning system is broken, is not trusted and holds back economic growth, new homes supply, and long term prosperity. To guarantee housing delivery HM24 also recognises that a replacement system must have lasting cross-party support in Westminster and in particular must also have enduring local support., To achieve the changes needed it proposes a national spatial plan for two generations. And regional spatial plans locally. It also proposes that local authorities, after a transition period of 10/20 years will become the sole suppliers of at scale building land, with the funding through land value capture enabling up to 100% community land value capture. HM24 says delivery of these far-reaching changes, once they are understood is possible as their benefits will gain local support. Adoption of these new policies will eventually deliver affordable homes, with local support and enable the foundations for employer driven growth to happen.
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Ian Campbell
5 June 2024
