Understanding why, over forty to fifty years, we have broken the housing market is difficult. Homes are too expensive. Market failure is the cause. . Some attribute housing supply failure to a hundred minor faults. Many individual factors do play an incidental role. But most are a red herring. By far the biggest cause of excessive house prices is the scarcity of house building land. Which is unnecessary. In England there is plenty of undeveloped land in rural areas and plenty of underused land in urban areas. Changing undeveloped and underused land into building land is therefore the way to mend the broken market. Land is the essential ingredient to building. Unfortunately there is a haphazard land rationing system in place which severely limits its supply. This chaotic control prevents the flow of new homes. Some land protection is needed to protect unique places, but it is not delivered in an acceptable way. The chaos means some top down planning, to remove the negative impacts of a haphazard land rationing system is unavoidable. Say a National Land service. Over the last two decades Conservative, Labour and Coalition governments have all expressed an intention to solve the housing supply problem. All have failed. Because land rationing is popular, and is exploited on a widespread.basis. But it has suffocating consequences for national prosperity.
To remedy the distortion the focus must be on who controls the rationing system and how. We all know who they are. Often called nimbies. To build locally we actually need their support. We need the goodwill of these free-riders: local residents whose personal agenda is naturally self-centred and sometimes malign. With reason, they live with the long term consequences of local change. These outsiders see themselves as paying a personal quality of life price to accept land use changes near them. . Because the power they wield rests on an odd, irrational and myopic mind-set. A power many use, but prefer to disguise. Instead, land rationing consequences advocates driven by sincere, deep personal fears local of change adopt labels of convenience: they are conservationists, nature lovers, environmentalists etc. . Often forming vocal local groups, they have the power of veto.
But there is a problem. If the price demanded by rationers, the opponents, of change is too high councils must impose their own price on residents of areas which refuse local land use change.Since the eighties, when land rationing took off, many opponents of local change have not paid a fair price. Too many areas have said no to local land use change without paying the appropriate penalty. Each locality is different. But their sanction usually the same: nil. As a result these groups have successfully delivered decades of tinkering, delaying and blocking new building. The result is restricted land supply quotas; rationing in plain English, ensuring years of miserable and expensive new homes linked with acute frustration across the nation as economic growth stumbles, and living standards stagnant.
Domestic policy failure on this scale and duration is a perverse outcome. It continues and grows for another odd reason. Local political divisions. Until recently acceptance of this odd state of affairs was hidden by phoney wars conducted by activists wearing different political or environmental labels. Group political labelling offers more power to block change. But in reality political ideology has nothing to contribute towards local decisions on where to build and where not to build. Despite this fact, political parties in local areas are often keen to use spatial policy to create false divisions. Which are used to justify local electoral changes of political control. Such divisions results in councillors advocating spatial policies which damage the national interest and impose unnecessary financial burdens on their own younger residents. Environmental opponents of change use similar techniques. Examples. of both rationing techniques might help.
A recent holiday in Devon brought me to Thurlestone, where I saw the results of enviromental led opposition to local land use change. Ugly car parks. Even uglier catering camps. Third world toilet shacks. Demand for outdoor and seaside activities continues to grow. But the rationing school of thought ignores the consequences. The nearby 728 acre Bentham Estate, including the famous beach, village shop, Grade II listed cottages, boathouses and Bigbury Golf Course was bought recently for around £30 million by a new owner. The previous owner had plans to replace public facilities with modern ones, including out of sight car parking. These were turned down. How many years of delay followed. How damaging will the rationing principle can be in reality is invisible. The previous owner purchased in 2014 and gave up in 2025. It is impossible to know how much unnecessary degradation was imposed on holiday makers, and will continue to be imposed on them into the future. All done by a small number of local people with good intentions who ignore bad outcomes.
Another example of the malign outcomes of rationing and myopia is far closer to home, on a far bigger scale and with direct and measured financial burdens placed on local residents in consequence. But it too continues and is used by blind activists to perpetuate unfair, unjust and economically destructive council policies. Look at the unmet housing needs of Windsor and Maidenhead council. Look at Thames Valley house prices if you want brutal evidence of the consequences of giving in over decades to the land rationeers. Local residents of a certain age have pocketed their inflationary housing inheritance based on decades of price rises without looking back. Many seem either unaware of the consequences for their children and grandchildren. Or indifferent. The connection is not made, as many continue to be active believers in land use rationing. All of these outcomes are understandable and legitimate at personal level. But the same mind-set endures amongst many local leaders too who continue to pretend there is a price affordability problem. These leaders will sometimes use the muddled mind-sets of their supporters to exploit past mistakes.Windsor and Maidenhead has its share. Maidenhead’s public owned town centre golf course is scheduled for house building. Here is one of the two worst spatial mistakes in the south east. The other is to release Wisley Airfield, on the M25/A3 junction for housing. It is in the middle or rural nowhere, with no public transport links. Why? Grey belt! It had a previous use, as an airfield. Guildford council stumbled, wearing its blindfold. Obvious actually.
Windsor and Maidenhead ten and twenty years ago faced the same problems as Guildford Borough and Surrey County . Where do the homes fast job growth creates go? Faced with lots of protected land, and armies of rationeers intent on pocketing their inheritances both made spatial mistakes. Neither location is on any masterplanning list as a possible location. Both were selected. Thirty years ago, based in Reading to overcome central Berkshire’s spatial problems I was advocating a new town, or major urban extension south of Reading. Called by some Readingstoke, it was poo-hoo’d by Reading Borough’s controlling Labour council and ignored by Wokingham Borough’s Conservative council.
Right now Maidenhead’s golf course building site has two alternative futures. One, as a highly sustainable housing location within walking distance of the station and new Elizabeth line it is an obvious candidate for high density urban living on a scale that meets a large part of the council’s local plan needs. Or alternatively it remains a public park for Maidenhead’s residents, with the unmet housing needs of Maidenhead met by other areas and funded by rates levies of Maidenhead’s residents, especially the local neighbours enjoying the biggest quality of life wins, The test of the new council will be how they respond to the outstanding housing needs and the spatial options they face. For example what happened to the Standec report on spatial options?
What is going on? Jobs dictate the location of housing demand. Or if you prefer housing demand follows jobs.This is what happens in a free market economy. But it is not the story that many would-be ‘political’ councillors in high growth, prosperous areas like the Thames Valley promote. They have replaced the ‘civic’ councillors commonsense policy seen fifty years go, whose duty was not political, it was the promoting the best interest of their local communities. Phoney political wars produce malign policy. It is used by all political parties. I have encountered phoney war divisions in Surrey, and Berkshire for many years. Examples of Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrat’s exploitation all exist. This sort of political manipulation of the land control system has therefore plagued Thames Valley growth since the 1980’s. By the eighties those with spatial insight were able to issue warnings. that with the growth of jobs, always welcome, comes growth of housing demand too, rarely welcomed. It is fairly obvious, but generally overlooked by councillors seeking evidence of political incompetence by their political opponents.
Windsor and Maidenhead Borough Council failure to build enough new homes is a classic study in spatial failure, spread over a generation. And, believe it or not, the phoney war of local politics continues to this day. This sparring is not, in the main except for a small handful of extreme veterans of stopping change, due to bad people, enemies or intentionally making bad policy. . Instead it is due to a deep misunderstanding of what can, and cannot be spatially changed in a free economy. without some degree of top down intervention, for example master planning or top down national planning.
. For fifty years the Thames Valley has enjoyed above average, sometimes spectacular economic growth built on the post-war technology led and government funded industries, as they evolved into the computer industries of today. The employers, both established and new employers love the proximity of London, Heathrow and the pretty villages where the executives can live. . More recently the enhanced connectivity of the Elizabeth Line has added to its appeal. So it is no surprise that W&M have a major housing supply problem, with London, Heathrow and employers around Slough, Reading and Bracknell all on their doorstep. Congestion of course on the M4, one of the first motorways sneaking out of central London, not surburban London in the sixties added fuel to the growth phenomena. More than 80% of the area is green belt, despite comprising mostly flat land with no special natural attractions with the exception of the river Thames. Little or none of the council areas lies in the Chilterns to the north, or Surrey Hills to the south. But pervasive green belt zoning makes the problem of finding white land, ie. land unprotected by government land protection policies much more difficult. It also explains why the price of building land is so high.
The government appointed New Towns Taskforce is expected to identify about ten new town locations shortly. The reactions of the main political parties will be revealing. And will matter a lot. Will they back national needs for growth and investment? Or will they succumb to local rationeers? Will they work together on spatial solutions which need generational thinking, building and delivering? The last one or two decades have shown us that new and enduring alignments are needed to deliver policies that boost economic growth and will once again make homes affordable, for the next generation. This will need a National Land Service register, about which I have already written blogs.
Ian Campbell
30 August 2025
