The objective is enough homes. Plainly stated, enough new supply so house prices once again in a decade or two ahead become become affordable. Here is the direction of travel. Here is fairness. Here is economic growth. Here is control, in place of unforeseen haphazard outbreaks of building. But we have lost our way. Focus on these housing targets is nonsense. 300,000/320,000/500,000+ new homes a year is tosh. Green belt and grey belt by the way is more tosh. Are we allowed to walk on the privately owned green belt? Or is it simply more or less green tint on a planners map in a planning office? Where precisely are the 300-500,000 new homes going? We do hear a lot of housing nonsense, from politicians which is sadly to be expected, but from planning experts from whom nonsense is anaemia and be must be wrong.
To repeat. Forget about housing numbers and think about where, left to a free market, housing growth will go in the future. Do this thinking, and you might reach your destination. Spend time talking about the symptoms and not the disease and you won’t.
Housing numbers is the wrong language. Until both groups, politicians and planning experts start to think and use the language of spatial distribution capturing the elusive goal, making homes affordable and re-igniting economic growth, will be a tautology dance. Confused? We cannot build the homes, the infrastructure and the workplaces until we listen to the market. Do we follow it? Or do we reject it? What is market demand for new homes telling us about location: in recent decades (look at house prices and look at commercial rents for workplaces); ask the local agents, who know; look at infrastructure overload in every subregion and spare capacity today, and look too at current market trends; then look at job growth trends in all locations and from all this data we will start to see where, if we ignore planning policies and local fears of change the market will take us left to its own devices. With this unfettered market led spatial picture a long term potential growth plan starts to emerge.. Now, and only now, we an re-introduce planning protection policies and take account of local fears of local change.But only up to a point.
The marker of growth is the predicted long term trend in employment growth if all spatial options remain open.to tomorrow’s employers. Snag is that on the evidence of several decades of post WW2 experience most unrestricted employment growth will happen in London and the south east. Such an unbalanced outcome is politically not acceptable for several sound reasons.The question then becomes, how far can government intervention change the future employers growth preferences without stifling them? Recent history suggests very little. IDC’s (industrial development certificates); ODP’s (office development permits); and the LOB (Location of Offices Bureau) all failed to ‘level up’ employment growth. Actually offering employers free commercial space also fails. The impact on the bottom line is trivial. What always matters is accessibility to the employers market. Speed, distance, skilled labour availability, speed of travel, absence of bureaucratic barriers (shame about Brexit). And so on.
Which is why we need a national spatial plan to decide which land can, if it is needed, be built on in the two generations ahead, and which land cannot be be built on…..ever. With a bit of luck these two filters will point out the locations for growth. The challenge then becomes, how do we turn reluctant host locations into welcome host locations. How do win local support. Who pays the residents the price they want to accept lots of homes? Residents in protected areas should pay their host councils is my advice. But this is contentious stuff!
Given the current right wing dominance in the Conservative party and its ideological adherence to the free open market I can never understand their commitment to a land rationing system. . The inconsistency suggests phoney. ideology. Perhaps they forgot what an open market in in building land means? Or perhaps they are too scared of the vested interests in their local areas to face accusations of two faces?.So far the Conservatives show no signs of understanding of their tendency to face two directions as we enter the last two weeks of the general election campaign. Shame. Without evidence of an understanding of economic truth, and a bald refusal to face market lead reality, which means progress will be held back it is difficult to believe the Conservatives can solve the housing deficit or make the right decisions to start growth growth in post-Brexit England.
Ian Campbell
25 June 2024
