Wishing them success. Supporting the objective. Admiring their courage. All positive responses are not enough to endorse Labour’s plan to publish a list of new town sites within its first 12 months in government, in partnership with local people.The locations will selected by an expert independent task force appointed to ‘help choose the right sites’ for these new towns, based on a new town code that developers must meet in these new settlements is naive. These policies are another bout of worthy aspirations which will start another decade of housing stasis. They will fail to deliver for several reasons.
The most important barrier is this. That the host locations will be opposed by residents if the new homes are built where people want to live, for example in the Home Counties and fringe London where the price:wage ratio is highest and other more rural areas in the south and the midlands whose spatial mindsets are dominated by those who by habit of thinking and wilful ignorance oppose land use change regardless.
But they will also fail because directives to developers will be ineffective. Developers will wait for the inevitable policy U-turn which will come with the next Conservative government in five, ten or fifteen years time. In other words more of the same.
What makes Angela Rayner think these new, bold ideas will win local support? History shows the opposite happens. Wait for the furore that will hit the headlines in twelve months time when the list of locations is published. Local residents in host locations will be incensed with passionate and largely sincere anger. Local opposition parties locally and their opportunistic MP’s in Westminster will join the crusade against despoliation of England’s green and pleasant land. And land owners know from experience Labour’s policy will be reversed.
There is another way, as other recent posts explain. What a missed opportunity now the election is set for 4 July. I will write more, but do hope the Labour manifesto when published shows a greater understanding of the real spatial word.
Ian Campbell
22 May 2024
