“Housing policy – the building of new homes, the stewardship of existing properties, the planning of our towns, the fundamental landscape of our lives – requires long-term thinking. And a long-term plan.”
Although politicians like to elide them, long-term thinking and putting difficult things off until tomorrow are not the same thing.
The tentative signs are that the Shadow Chancellor is switching from an emphasis on industrial strategy and “green prosperity” to one on housebuilding and planning reform.
The A list and its successors haven’t kept a golden generation out of Parliament. Many of those who might have made it up aren’t putting themselves forward for selection in the first place.
Pierre Pierre has gone beyond wonkish economic arguments to spell out the moral, social, and conservative consequences of the crisis.
Full-fat planning reform may be off the table, but there are plenty of sensible interventions the Government could make before the next election.
As Ed Miliband learned in 2015, it doesn’t matter how popular your policies are individually if voters don’t buy into your broader offer.
Building homes for the sake of building homes risks failing both present and future generations. Housebuilding targets are only a part of the equation.
Government could buy the land at its agricultural value, grant planning permission, sell it on to developers at the higher price, and split the bonus between owners and communities.
Centre for Cities research has shown that, after controlling for differences in population growth, we are today missing 4.3 million homes that other European countries managed to build.
The alternative to stagnation is not turning the South of England into the next Houston or Tokyo. We need to choose where develops, and how.
The fifth article in a new series on ConHome about how government might be made smaller, taxpayers better off and and society stronger – through strong families, better schools and good jobs.
So some will say that his attack on Labour’s confusions and contradictions is pots and kettles. All the same, its contents are well worth assimilating.
Those of us concerned believed we needed some adjustment to the system; there is currently far too much dependence on greenfield sites.
New rules threaten to give England a generation of houses that are uglier and less popular than those we have built historically.