Andy Burnham is due to publish his 10 year plan soon, although timing has slipped. An important part of the emphasis will be releasing economic investment through devolution to facilitate the delivery of lots of new homes and infrastructure. Responsibility for delivery of the Burnham plan in regions will be the achieved through the appointment of mayors in mayoral strategic areas. But will the spatial changes, by which I mean the new building and re-building work in rural and urban areas these mayors must deliver to release pent-up demand actually happen? Will the mayors have the executive powers and also have the democratic legitimacy to deliver at scale development when faced by local councils who oppose the large scale land use changes the new mayors spatial policies will cause? Not if you ask ChatGPT. So whose policies will be paramount if conflict between the mayors and local councils emerges?
But the spatial reality is this. Land-use change at scale, and lasting for the duration which is needed to re-start economic growth, ie. decades, and make the dream of home ownership again affordable will not happen if the tools of change are limited to legislative changes and mayoral policy guidance. At least not in the economic hot-spots like the Thames Valley where most councils and their residents continue to want two irreconcilable outcomes: continuing prosperity and very few new homes.This has been the quietly murmured mantra for five decades and it has not gone away. Why should mass myopia be different this time around, when most residents still deny the connection between land-use change near them, and continuing prosperity for them and their children. No one wants to face reality. So no leaders want to point it out. As a result no one has started this programme of spatial re-awakening. . On the contrary, it is the opposite. Look at this example of recent myopia appearing on LinkedIn today (7 November 2026) posted by Kevin Hollinrake MP for Thirsk and Mallon, Conservative Party. . Under the banner headline it says Planning meetings cancelled….Labour are ripping away powers from your local representatives……local planning should be decided by the councillors you elect. It is endorsed by the Conservative Councillors Association. It seems Conservative councillors think that local fears of local change are more important than national policies put forward by the government to enable investment to happen.. After fifty years of spatial failure; the dead hand of fear and the inability to look ahead; it is plain no lessons are learnt from past failures if these views prevail.
If the Conservative Councillors Association were instead promoting a spatially aware approach, that recognised the need for investment and growth, but ideally not in rural areas of value such a spatial distinction would show sound judgement. Were the CGA to advocate overspill housing policies linked to financial incentives for host communities funded by rate surcharges on residents in favoured no growth areas that too would show commitment to the big picture and how the market works, whilst seeking to preserve the best of our much loved rural areas. .. But these all important insights are missing. This level of polarised politicing brings back unhappy memories of Theresa Villiers successful rebellion in 2022, which stopped Boris Johnson seeking in the national interest to introduce land-use zoning, a form of market substitution. Unless Kemi Badenoch explains this outbreak of myopia her hopes that cross-party long term spatial policy making will happen are dead. And with it are hopes that the UK is ready to act in a mature manner to solve intractable domestic housing supply problems.
The counter argument is that the introduction of an additional layer of mayoral bureaucracy will wither as hope for planned spatial change dies. Kids must then give up on their home ownership dreams. Investors will see that uncertainty cannot be replaced with maturity. Or Andy Burnham seeing the dangers, announces that mayors will, if his party is given a new electoral mandate in 2029, be granted powers to override myopia, nationalise future building land and regeneration sites in urban areas in order to win the support of investors, young buyers and urban residents who see that development in rural areas in Conservative eyes are a special case, targeted to receive but also expected to pay for privileged levels of no growth protection. This outcome would give advocates of the free market and rationing of building land supply payment in the correct currency, higher living costs for rural residents to deflect their spatial responsibilities to urban areas. It seems a fair outcome to help young home buyers whose prospects of homes at affordable prices have been ruined by decades of generational thoughtlessness.
Ian Campbell
8 November 2026
