Our Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak wrote an revealing Comment piece in The Times, Tuesday, 13 February 2024 about his government’s housing policy in England. His intentions may be good and his objectives seem to be worthy, but my goodness. His understanding of the reasons why 14 years of Conservative policy making have created an unaffordability crisis, a homeless crisis, a disillusionment with planning and planners crisis, a zero carbon crisis, an economic and productivity no growth crisis are close to nil. To be generous his comments are confusing. To be blunt, they affront his high office and his credibility..
’The desire to own your own home is one which drives us…………….So I understand people’s anger when that dream feels too far away for too many…….’. These are honest words. And show his fellow feeling. But then Sunak says ‘And our plan is working…. . Successive Conservative governments have taken the tough but necessary decisions on housing ……..Our long-term plan for housing is working. We are building the homes people want in the places where they are needed, whilst still protecting our precious green spaces..’. What plan? Which necessary decisions? House prices two times what is fair! Rents three times what is fair! Trebling the size of Cambridge. Welcome, but where is the planned context: to London, to Birmingham, to Europe? Will road, rail and air capacity also treble.This is called strategic planning. And 20 more cities will have haphazard growth thrust upon them, regardless of local support. Why them?, 20 rabbits out of one election hat. Great at a children’s birthday party, but months before a general election? Why not another 100 towns in the south whose next generation also desperately need additional new homes somewhere? Their councils will not face tough decisions. Lucky for their existing homes owners. Unfair for their next generation. Is it a coincidence they often forget to vote?
Fragments of disjointed spatial thinking are not a plan.They are scraps here and there. To say ‘Our long term plan for housing is working.’ is a fiction. There is no plan, except blame the Major of London. And there is patently no long term plan, which for deliver relies on cross party collaboration and local councils long term support.
Is it too late to have a plan, that delivers reality, that secures local support, that delivers zero carbon, that provides a lot more public open space, of the rural and urban variety, that delivers economic and productivity led national growth?
As the Major of London is finding out, housing delivery, whether urban renewal and densification or building in the rural open countryside takes a very long time, far beyond the the five year election cycle. Residents everywhere worry about changes near them. They live with the mistakes. It is they who must first believe change can be beneficial and can add value., There is evidence. Exciting examples of premium values replacing political vandals values. Landed estates and the Commission for New Towns are England’s finest examples. Other counties too have fine examples.
If we are to believe the Prime Minister is sincere when he says ‘……we know there is much more to do. To solve the housing challenge , we must ask not just “how many””, but “where” . We need to build homes in the places where people need and want them. There’s little point trying to force large new estates on our countryside and green belt when that is where public resistance to development is strongest and where the GP surgeries, schools and roads don’t exist to support new communities. I also believe deeply in the need for careful stewardship of our beautiful natural landscapes. And we must give local communities a say. We won’t solve the housing challenge if we simply ignore people’s cincerns or bulldoze through local opposition. All that would build is resentment ‘, so we must ask him, if he will change course and find a way to deliver a long term plan that is credible? Then he must talk to his political opponents. He must speak the whole truth to local activists and stop being economical with the truth. Few trust politicians. Sunak and Starmer working together might just be able to reverse this collapse in democratic sentiment. Gove is right. We must change attitudes, and do it now.
The prize for our generation is refuting the nimby baby boomer rude label. The prize for our children and our grand-children is their inheritance will be better than our own. That will be a cause for pride.
Ian Campbell
14 February 2024
