Planning minister Lee Rowley said so on Tuesday. It does not surprise me. After decades of confrontational planning of the worst sort, the battlefield is littered with the debris of the war . Poorly located and poorly supported housing, priced at twice the fair rate, plainly designed to the lowest cost denominator, situated without regard to the long term needs of the area, with bare and neglected landscaping where no one wants to go, pumping CO2 into the air with little thought about future climate priorities as their owners drive pretty much everywhere in one or two of their cars to find some public open space they like to visit: public transport is not possible.
Do we learn? In the early sixties as a student I recall designing a new housing estate. Did we provide space for a car with each house, or not? Two years later I recall as a first time house buyer viewing a new house on a new estate without central heating. And I recall, as a residential land buyer in 1968 predicting house price inflation, and simply arguing about the rate of increase to justify pushing up the bid to buy the land. And so it continues. As I ask, do we learn?
For residents the planning system permits unexpected and intrusive major change on their doorstep. And they do not like it. Nobody in four decades has explained to them why we need change near their home. Their parents did not expect to call these spatial shots locally. But this generation, which is my own, the boomers do. Some, just a few, are worrying about about their children and grandchildren’s futures. No-one explains to them that the simple fact that if the boomers live longer this means a static population needs a bigger stock of homes. Or if not, our time is up! And if immigration is needed to maintain and increase their prosperity no-one has explained to them the connection. Why, because governments do not like telling their electorate the facts, if parts of the popular media and their political opponents will avoid facing reality too. The political threats seem too high. And they are. Those in public life face impossible choices.
Lee Rowley and his boss, Michael Gove are hemmed into corner. Not that Labour will find it much easier. How do those in power win local support for necessary change? Is working together over generations, like the clever landed estates, the answer? . Or is it buying local support with rates holidays in host locations or residents subsidies for those within sight of new pylons the answer? Or is it a long term vision which is agreed in Whitehall and fully explained locally? Perhaps we could start by looking at successful solutions in other successful democratic nations? Or should we accept that local plans and spatial regulation through development control is an irredeemable and broken model? Instead we need long term housing delivery through land ownership control of building locations, which is welded with development control powers. This model means we can create places people like, love and will pay premiums to visit, live in and work in. Time to change the system in my weathered, knarled opinion. And time to work together for the common good.
Ian Campbell
22 March 2024
