Good to hear some candid common sense from our Prime Minister from his speech at Pinewood Studios. From today’s generation of politicians honesty is a rarity. He is right to observe that if you walk around England and look at the infrastructure, it is plain we have freeloaded off the British genius of the past. I endorse his criticisms, And I started my training at the College of Estate Management for my career in property in 1963, when he was a one! ! Since commercially retiring in 2015, the more I studied the reasons for spatial failure, unaffordable homes, insufficient infrastructure, economic sluggardly urban progress and the studied the divisions which plague our planning system the more I am sure he is right. Full marks to a political leader for facing contentious facts and spelling them out. It is daft beyond belief to spend £100million building a bat tunnel over HS2 and failingbto build a vital reservoir in Oxfordshire.
A large part of my career at Campbell Gordon was spent telling the owners of fast growing companies keen to locate in the Thames Valley, so handy for Heathrow, for London and offering rural life too, that the specialist commercial accommodation they wanted was not available. Changing the use class orders to enable high tech buildings was one example of mule headed resistance to change by council leaders. Another was out of town offices: the predecessor of massive premium value creation as business parks could then be planted and provide their rich dividends. What a shame we did not tot up the value of the economic growth which was denied time and again by councils run by lobby groups whose priority was to maintain their prosperity by importing new jobs into their towns, but,,with the exception of Reading and Slough stop the building of the essential homes needed to support the jobs. I am glad to read that his government will not accept this nonsense anymore.
As Planning Resource (Alex King; 5 December 2024) rightly says Starmer did not say today how the government will turbocharge housebuilding. If he can find a way to overcome, or bypass the nimby lobbyists progress might happen. I have written blogs on this barrier. One possible key is finding a means to win local support, maybe using financial incentives like rates subsidies and rates surcharges. Another is to find a governance mechanism to bypass the nimby lobby.,whichever, it will remain essential that the powerful vested local interests like the landowners are convinced that the changes that Labour introduce will not be ditched at the next two or three elections. Whatever changes are introduced must have generational, not five year, life organs. If this is not the case the powerful vested interests have the capacity to derail whatever changes Labour brings forward, , thus guaranteeing years more spatial stasis. That will be a death knell for our children and grandchildren.
Ian Campbell
5 December 2024
