Is this possible? I mean Labour’s housing plan? Can it work? Labour is to announce locations for new towns and large urban expansions within a year of becoming the government. What happens when they do publish the new town sites? All hell will break out in these locations. Local councillors, especially the non-Labour ones; local MP’s; local conservation groups; local protection groups; local residents and most of all the local media will have a field day. Few want to be hosts by compulsion. Pity the expert who has to defend their choice of site in front of a local no change audience.. It is easy to underestimate the widespread passion years of haphazard, unpopular building has generated. Ten years ago I was invited to a public meeting to justify my personal essay entry in a national competition (for the Wolfson Prize 2014) explaining how candidates would deliver a new town. Instead of adopting worthy design principles I chose a location, and built my pragmatism led spatial case around it. A petition of several hundred local residents names in opposition to the essay’s spatial choice was submitted to the judges..At that point I thought I had wandered into Alice in Wonderland.
All sorts of reasons will be discovered, often good, compelling reasons, to oppose the selected location. The local opposition campaigns which the announcement will ignite, will recruit champions from every corner of the local community. It is this predicable, passionate and locally led knee-jerk response which is the clue to the way Labour, if they are in power, and the wider Westminster leadership must shoulder nationwide housing salvation. I am confident the appointed experts will do a professional job in spatial terms. The sites will be sound and appropriate locations. But this outcome is not the point. Such reality will not stop the outrage of local residents. The question for the new government will be, how do they turn local opposition in host locations into local support? It has defeated Westminster’s leaders since the sixties.
What is the answer? Can we learn from Michael Gove’s joker in the pack? His proposal a year ago, dubbed the Cambridge Phenomenon to triple the size of Cambridge within twenty years is courageous and spatially sound. So far the local opposition has not challenged the spatial or economic arguments which endorse major growth around Cambridge. Instead their opposition relies on a lack of water, a technical problem with a technical solution at a cost, to oppose the. Cambridge Phenomenon. Snag is what’s in it for Cambridge’s current residents facing two decades of building work and the disruption which follows? Affordable homes for the next generation who cannot vote yet, and reduced house price inflation for those who can vote. An odd outcome by the way. With consequences.
One possible solution is to invest in a high profile public relations campaign explaining why, site by site, the chosen locations are sound. I do not believe this will work. For a start the owners of the land identified will be actively running opposition campaigns against the compulsory purchase of their land, unless they are told and convinced they will be paid full open maket development value for their land. Is this expensive route sensible? If it means we, the tax payers pay the land owners several million pounds per acre for agricultural land worth about ten thousand per acre recalling the land’s building value enhancement is not the result of money and risk put up by the land owner it is a terribly bad deal. . But accepting this solution blocks claims by land owners of confiscation. Despite the reality that the development value is created by the local community. It is a very expensive way to go forward. And will inflame local residents even more.
Or we an wait ten or twenty years. Planning this far ahead extinguishes hope value, the main component of development value. Politically this timescale has little appeal. But there is upside. Landowners, option holders, builders and. developers faced with the certainty of new, high appeal premium supply on the horizon will accelerate their own build out programmes. This outcome is good news.
Instead the key is winning widespread support of local residents. But can it happen quickly, by which I mean in one year or two or three? . There is a way. It may have negatives. It is offering significant financial incentives to local residents who meet chosen criteria , such as those living within close proximity of the new building projects. Buying local support might require a rates holiday for a period of years. How effective will a rates subsidy be in reality? And who reimburses the local councils who must recover their rates shortfall? One possibility is the taxpayer.. .There is a fairer and cheaper option, initially more contentious. Suggested in earlier blogs it could require residents in areas whose housing overspill is exported to these new town locations to pay for the advantages this overspill policy offers exporting councils., Introducing policy on these lines in a twelve months rush will be problematic. To achieve the necessary level of acceptability will need a wider understanding of the spatial problem England faces. But there is a different way to look at the homes imbalance within our society which clarifies the consequences of continuing with a housing supply system that is, in generational terms, caused by an ageing population sneakingly unfair to first time buyers and the young foist upon them by their elders.
Look at historic examples of other countries whose wealth has been dramatically but arbitrarily re-distributed. by unforeseen events, leading to the need for state intervention transfers of private wealth in order to maintain equality and social harmony. In West Germany after 1945 the Alllies and later the new West German government had to deal with large sections of their population with unique, but different needs. One group who had lost their homes and those who had not. Another group was those who had lost their limbs or loved ones and those who had not. “Fairness here was not about making good past losses but about enabling. future integration by. promoting capital formation. and economic recovery to help victims build their lives. (Out of the Darkness, The Germans 1942-2022; Frank Trentmann, 2023. p.169). . In England today we have a young generation whose future prosperity is now at risk due to housing policy failure over several decades. To correct this historic error it may fair, and prevent growing divisions in society if the suggestion above change is introduced.
Regardless, the optimum way to proceed is to first to introduce and win the spatial debate at national level. What does this mean? It means creating a national spatial plan for the whole of England applying a series of simple land use and market based tests. It means explaining why this step is needed. Previous blogs explained why and how.
Spatially planned and introduced over several years a national spatial plan in conjunction with a wider spatial understanding campaign in target locations will put growth foundations in place. The framework for a long term, sustainable spatial plan for new housing. supply that removes the conflict between national needs and local opposition to change and stops generational division becoming a growing source of resentment. By planning one and two generations ahead enables the next generation of infrastructure to be funded from local development values; enables the creation of premium values, preserves and enhances prosperity for all generations and, if party political attitudes are aligned introduces new realms of public open space in rural areas on a generous scale.
In summary, the contemporary but sterile housing policy debate captures two conflicts. Local fears versus national needs. And generational transfers, as wealth moves from those without to those with. I remain of the opinion that a long term cross-party consensus in Westminster is the very best outcome. Without such an outcome economic growth (think about the opposition to electricity power lines for an example) is shackled and young enterprise is swamped by unfair, increasing accommodation costs.
Ian Campbell
28 May 2024
