We must solve housing crisis to ‘level up’ Britain
BARONESS Thatcher changed Britain in so many ways.Among her more enduring reforms, giving council tenants the right to buy their home – at reduced prices – was perhaps the most transformative. Over one and a half million homes have been sold off since she introduced the Right to Buy policy.
She also championed the cause of home ownership more generally. When she took office in 1979, 9.7 million people owned their own home. Today, 14.6 million households are owner occupied – 63 per cent of all English households.
But wonderful as that has been for those who own their home, it has done little to deal with a problem that subsequent governments have also failed dismally to tackle. We do not build enough new homes.
Last year, 247,000 more houses were built in England and Wales than were demolished. That is far less than the Government’s target of 300,000 a year – although it is still a big increase from the recent nadir of 130,000 in 2012-13.
When you consider that net migration into the UK was 313,000 in the year ending March 2020, you will see that we are not even building enough new homes to stand still, let alone to expand the pool available to meet demand.
WORSE, the average deposit – as a percentage of first-time buyers’ income – is now six times what it was in the 1980s, which has resulted in a collapse in home ownership among the young. Most of us know of children forced to stay with parents well into their 20s despite having perfectly good jobs, because they simply cannot afford to get on the housing ladder.
The phrase “property-owning democracy” is meaningless if it doesn’t apply across the generations. Worse, it is a permanent reminder to many voters of the Government’s failure to tackle one of the biggest issues we face: ensuring that decent housing is available to all.
The Government’s proposed reforms to the planning system are designed to address that.
Quite apart from anything else, dealing with the housing crisis is a basic element in the Prime Minister’s plans for “levelling up” in the Midlands and North. Fail to fix that and everything else falls apart.
The problem is that while everyone agrees on the need for more housing, almost no one agrees where those houses should be built, with so-called NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) going berserk when a development is proposed near where they live.
The Planning Bill aims to stop this NIMBY-ism, by designating specific areas as “growth zones”. In these areas, local officials will no longer have the power to consider planning applications case by case. Instead, every council will have to classify all their land as either “protected”, “renewal” or “growth”.
PROTECTED areas – such as Green Belt, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty or at risk of flooding – would be allowed very limited building. But in “renewal” and “growth” areas, developments that conform to certain rules would be approved.
The reaction to this has been entirely predictable, with howls of outrage from those who are worried that there will be development near them. One of the factors behind last week’s loss of the Conservatives’ safe seat of Chesham and Amersham was anger at the proposed planning
changes. This is the dilemma now facing the Government. Few things antagonise voters in many of the seats traditionally regarded as safe for the Conservatives than the threat of new developments. They, and their Tory MPs, all say how important it is that we build new homes. Just not, er, here.
But if the Government fails to deliver on its promise of a home building revival, it will suffer the consequences elsewhere.
The planning reforms are a sensible and serious approach to a vital need.We have to build more houses. The opposition to the reforms is NIMBY-ism of the most transparent and selfish kind, built on deliberately misleading assertions. There is, for example, no significant threat to the Green Belt: rather, there is a category – “protected” – specifically to keep it.
The current planning system is bureaucratic, fragmented and outdated and its piecemeal approach works against any widespread attempt to tackle our housing shortage.
The Government must stand firm on its plans and ignore what one wag has labelled the BANANAs – Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.
Housing is a key priority, and it is in all our interests that we have a system that works.
‘Housing is a key priority and we need to have a system that works’