Shadow planning minister Matthew Pennycook on BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Thursday, 20 June highlighted the lack of mechanism for strategic planning to enable local councils to work together to deliver housing growth at scale. He is right to highlight the omission. His thinking must be applauded. But he faces big headwinds. It is not yet clear how Labour will introduce strategic planning which enables growth where it is needed and does so with local support in the host location. Nor does Mr Pennycook tell us how the land which is selected will be bought without either paying lottery like prices for it, turning lots of lucky owners into millionaires or, if sequestration is chosen, how he will stop the victims using the law to block, delay and sabotage sensible spatial plans. Those with early hopes of a bonanza will, with good cause, believe sequestration is contrary to equitable behaviour. Handled clumsily this group have the clout to do immense harm. After all, no one welcomes receiving a compulsory purchase order., and if the price is far below market value, the result is anger at the highest level.
These are two very big questions. Get the answers wrong on one or both and Pennycook will enter the lions den. The mauling will damage his party’s popularity and be used to slow down his hopes for accelerating new housing supply., Earlier blog entries set out my recommendations, particularly in HOUSING MANIFESTO 2024 dated 29 April 2024. Overcoming these two hurdles will not be easy for the reasons HM24 sets out. Without achieving local support in host locations, and without achieving land owners neutrality on pricing the likelihood of another decade of housing policy stasis is very high. The starting point for Mr Pennycook will be clear leadership from the new government with a first objective being to win cross party support in both Houses of Parliament for a deliverable answer to these two questions.
Elsewhere in earlier blogs I have considered the window of opportunity, perhaps better labeled honeymoon period that a decisive election victory will gift, that must be used to deadly effect. In the first flush of success the target to be persuaded will be activist communities in locations where growth is most restrained and house prices are least affordable, for example around the Home Counties. Who are their new MP’s? How can they be persuaded? What price do they think their communities will need paying to become willing hosts? Where will this funding come from? Should the threat of financial surcharges added to local rates in overspill council areas be deployed? Is there a deal to be done with these MP’s if they are offered what they want, by leaning on the MP’s of the areas whose housing burden will be less? Careful fore-thought will be essential. All these challenges will be eased if in the meantime a national spatial plan is in rapid production with key opposition leaders, as suggested in HM24.
Ian Campbell
23 June 2024
