It is a question now attracting more media attention.It is also stretching the minds of Westminster’s MP’s. Which is wonderful, if past spatial errors are avoided the second time around.. The new focus is long overdue. The crucial reasons which are why the housing supply system has failed do not change. They were first visible forty years ago in popular, high growth locations. So it is worth identifying these danger areas by stress-testing them with two actual examples. Without starting spatial/ locational stress testing before replacement supply processes are debated , and then adopted once again undeliverable housing policies will be introduced, and once again they will fail to deliver. So once again house prices will, when international financial confidence returns, resume their unwarranted and unnecessary upward spiral, giving future generations growing bad value for money and clogging economic growth more and more.
The first example I want to use relates to future supply of new homes in the Thames Valley. This is the region where I was in practice as an estate agent from 1976-2014. But the label estate agent is unhelpful. We never sold a house! The Thames Valley together with west London was also the area where I was a residential land buyer, and a commercial sites buyer from 1967-1976. So after nearly fifty years experience as both an adviser and a client in spatial terms I know the region very well. The IT revolution started in the Thames Valley in the 70’s and early 80’s. not because academia led companies were the reason. It was the region where people with the technical skills were available. Who remembers Racal Electronics and Sir Ernest Harrison for example, the birth child of Vodafone? It is said that investing £1000 in Racal in 1961 was worth £14 million by the time he retired in 2000.
In consequence it is distressing to see the lessons of past spatial failures have not been learnt. Most local councils in the the Thames Valley think their areas are full-up. But few think through the consequences. This mind-set first emerged in the late 1980’s when local leaders welcomed the jobs and prosperity fast growth brought to their residents, but they did not want the houses which are an essential part of this bargain. And it seems not much has changed. The Berkshire Prosperity Board is reported to have produced a three page initial report Unlocking delivery of social and affordable housing although in fact the report is simply a paper setting down some parameters. None of it talks about the big picture which I set out in the blog dated August 14, 2026, Policy & housing delivery; a Thames Valley answer which put forward the spatial case for Forest City (2). The idea is modelled on Forest City (1) for one million east of Cambridge. put forward by far-sighted advocates Shiv Malik, a former investigative journalist and Joseph Reece, an entrepreneur and co-founder of the campaign group Looking for Growth. In my August blog the location for Forest City (2) is south of Reading and north of Basingstoke and Fleet in Hampshire, simply because this is the first area of unprotected, white land available in the Thames Valley west of London. And, if the spatial intentions which are the bread and butter of today’s planning policies, are to be believed and given weigh, it is by placing a flashing light here, on the south east map of England that the journey to find land on which to build with support starts. But this decision will require civic leadership which was missing fifty years ago. Is this leadership still missing?
Urban areas have different building pressures but need the same civic leadership from the front. Take Richmond upon Thames as the urban example. Once again I know it well, having lived in the Borough for nearly twenty years. Its residents too do not welcome being compelled to think of locations for build lots more new homes. So its leaders will avoid the issue, if they can. Their political careers are at risk otherwise. There is one obvious, highly sustainable building location. It is above Richmond station, which has excellent rail services and is already a rail transport hub. This airspace is the sort of place where lots of new homes could be and should be built. Some forward thinking exists, shown by the newly built multi-storey bicycle park. Are there other proposals for a long term, post the London plan proposals for a major regeneration above the station? None that the public knows about. Once again, sensible spatial planning starts with the location..But local politics makes this sort of leadership dependant sustainable planning impossible. Until this sort of process led spatial planning is replaced with location led planning at scale we will not solve the housing supply deficit. Repeating a generation of spatial planning failure could be suicide for England the second time around.
The muddle and the myopia apparent nearly fifty years ago remains. These are the threats.
- Building new homes in rural areas, eg open countryside, needs one approach. Building new homes in urban areas, ie. regeneration, needs another approach. Both need site assembly skills and far sighted civic leadership.
- Home building is highly contentious in rural areas because the land use change it needs is seen to be wrong. Opposition to land use change is a spatial issue, which can only be overcome with a long term lead-in time scale. The precise nature of the opposition will be unique in each case, as each location is also unique so the time frame will need to take these differences into account.
- Home building in urban areas is fundamentally different to building in the open countryside. Opposition will therefore be based on different fears. There may already be a lot of residents living on the land identified for re-development. They will be another source of resistance to change, unless they believe that their pèrsonal circumstances will improve.
- Decisions about tenure, ie what sort of homes, whether market or social are in terms of the local welcome premature until spatial policies which have local residents support, are in place. This is an ideal. It is can difficult to achieve in reality. Landed estates are likely to have useful expertise in this area. Once again time is the answer.
- What local residents fear above all is unexpected change. For two good reasons. One, they do not expect to see any financial or community benefit them selves. And two, their personal experience is that most new development is unliked and aesthetically not appealing.
- In any event, due to the lack of trust in all political leaders, who are seen to place their party first, not their civic duty first, residents do not trust, or take information provided at face value. Put plainly they do not believe what they are told about planned changes.,
- Winning the trust of local residents in local land use change rarely happens. Since the end of WW2 in 1945 in my opinion it has not happened anywhere, with the possible exception of Milton Keynes. Lessons from that success need to be learned.
- The call for sites system, which is the basis of local plans, is a central plank of a broken plan system. It results in building locations chosen by landowners and cynically validated by local councils. In spatial terms this is an absurd process,:and a primary reason why planning, planners and local politicians are not trusted. Local councils know where to build, and not build. They must follow their instincts, make sound spatial decisions and accept responsibility for delivering the land too
- Green belt, grey belt, brownfield land, previous developed land and white land, are all labels invented by planners to make a defective process work. These categories may be useful going forward, provided they are only intended to help roll out the spatial strategy which has already identified the building locations.
In order to build lots of new homes, with local support must become a process which is spatially led, as explained in previous blogs. In this blog I use two actual locations, both needing lots of new homes, to illustrate how the new system will work; how it will avoid the past pitfalls.
Ian Campbell
23 September 2026
