Extremely useful to hear the views of Ben Fletcher, the Conservative Warrington and Cheshire mayoral candidate given at the Onward organised fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference yesterday (5 October 2026). Sir Simon Clarke, a director of Onward and chairman of Conservative YIMBY led an informative discussion. It is available to watch on Youtube under the title Home Truths: fixing Cheshire and Warrington’s housing crisis.
Fletcher is proposing 50,000 new homes. Which is ambitious and right. This makes us all think ahead, and local residents on the spatial implications.
The Labour Party mayoral candidate, Dan Price is proposing 1000 affordable homes. Both agree housing is too expensive. There may be some difference about the scale of the solution, and maybe on locations and methods for the development corporations to deliver but none of these differences seem to revolve around political ideology. I do not know why the Labour Party candidate’s ambitions seem more modest. Perhaps he, like so many on both sides of the political divide simply does not understand the housing debate?
When asked by Clarke how he sees his new combined mayoral authority working with the government to deliver new homes Fletcher said they will be a ‘constructive partner’. No one can criticise such a sound policy. I also liked his plan to involve the public in selecting locations identifying where to build in advance; as he says, effectively they will be pre-agreeing locations. This intention is spot on, if the mayor can then follow through, S he has no plans to take control of locations.
So there is a snag. And this is where maybe on reflection you cannot take politics out of planning? And that is who will be responsible for delivering the housing on the pre-selected sites? My experience is that successful development need clear long term thinking. Holistic planning, to ensure the infrastructure also happens as advocated by Fletcher, with which I also fully agree, cannot be delivered unless the there is control of location and timing of the housing. . Which after a generation of haphazard ‘call for sites’ spatial planning dependent upon the market has absolutely failed.
Hopeful mayor-to-be Ben Fletcher I wish you all success with you plan for 50,000 new homes and endorse whole-heartedly the ambitions you set out. But in my opinion unless and until you recognise land ownership is the key ingredient to delivering holistic planning outcomes in locations that local residents support, you too will fail. Why is this blind-spot so deeply rooted in the Conservative soul, when local spatial history has so many failures littered around to see? Nationalisation of future development land needed for at scale building land is the essence of spatial control. It defines delivery. It also funds the infrastructure. It is also the essence of local support. The free market cannot do it without removal of all spatial planning controls and both of us think that is wrong. Look at the history of spatial failure from the 1980’s to today in your area if you are unsure about you local lesson in spatial planning failure.
Ian Campbell
6 0ctober 2026.
