More helpful, encouraging, yet worrying details of Labour’s thinking is emerging. Some commentary is necessary. Labour must keep their eye on the paramount objective, providing the large number of new homes needed but only with local support. There will be a transition period ahead. This means being extremely careful not to be sided-lined by short-term, vested diversions, including those with conflicting agenda as the new policy directions emerge.
- Brownfield land In order to solve the housing deficit brownfield land is a myth. It is a diversion. In the places where housing land is most needed brownfield land barely exists. Look at the the CPRE’s own figures (see blog dated 29 January 2023). It is well well below one quarter of one percent of the land area.
- Tenure The future mix of social and market housing will be a big debate for every area. But it is nothing to do with the supply of future building land. The future locations of building land is driven by local communities spatial wishes. But the tenure mix is driven by social priorities, set nationally and locally. . When the spatial debate for local areas is settled and moving forward, then is the time for local councils, in their role as strategic and visionary long term master planners to decide the amount and distribution of housing in all its different tenures.
- Locally based development corporations Reports suggest Starmer is keen to set these up. In order to provide lots of new homes which are acceptable to local people this is the only sensible way to go forward. Locally led and controlled new settlement corporations can spearhead the majority of the future supply of building land. This is good news. For the first time in a generation, proceeding on these lines, provided spatial decisions rest with local corporations, the potential for a return to place making principles, the foundation of successful masterplanning once again becomes possible.
Luke Francis, former advisor to levelling up shadow secretary Lisa Nancy says “Labour is keen to build a good relationship with developers”. His sentiment is realistic and sound. But timing is pivotal. Local communities, or their local development corporations are the arbiters of future spatial land use policy. Their agenda is community wide. It is the means of winning local support. Developers policy is rightly and legitimately narrow: the commercial best interest of their shareholders; the exploitation of their land by releasing its hope value.For local councils, choosing the right path for their communities will be fraught. It will be more easily navigated by local councils who adopt a long term, phase one and phase two spatail policy, ie. phase one ends with expiry of the current local plan. Phase two, when spatial policy is solely in the control of local communities, then takes precedence. This dual approach will maximise local communities share of hope value, or land value capture. By playing the time card, land valuers will be on councils’s side. Between ten and twenty years ahead hope value disappears.
4. Consensus critical In Canterbury, following the recent local elections there is a newly formed Labour and Liberal Democrat joint administration which says in the first 100 days in power they will re-draft the city’s controversial local plan. Rushing like this is unwise. For example, the local Labour group want to introduce some ‘initial actions’ whose introduction and delivery will take years, such as becoming carbon neutral by 2030. Assuming they do not sign up the Conservatives too, what happens to these targets at the next election? This headline stuff is window dressing, not sustainable policy making. Delivering sustainable local plan policy making is plain silly if you know an important part of the local political spectrum is opposed, with the prospect of a policy U-turn already on the horizon. Grown up debates must now happen in Canterbury across the divide to deliver a local plan for the entire community. Labour want to review the plan’s housing numbers and where they should be sited, asking whether a stand-alone garden city is a timely option. Good stuff. Get buy-in from the losers as well as the winners of the local elections, find the common ground, and local businesses and local residents might take the local plan seriously. More to the point, local land owners looking for their share of the hope value lottery will too. Until that point is reached, these statements carry no weight.
At national level, for the first time in three decades one of the leading political parties is thinking hard about the delivery of sustainable planning policies.They too will have to work with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Westminster to build a deliverable consensus. By taking the lead, by recognising consensus is needed nationally as well as locally Labour can set an example.It is possible the electorate is now ready for this sort of discussion.It is time for Labour to put forward a generational, locally led consensus rooted local planning policy.
Ian Campbell
25 May 2023
