Gove backs ‘beauty’ before housing targets
Levelling Up Secretary admits goals have been missed but stresses need for ‘right sort of homes’
‘It is no kind of success if, simply to hit a target, the homes that are built are shoddy’
MICHAEL GOVE appeared to publicly abandon the Tory manifesto target of building 300,000 homes a year yesterday, saying numbers alone should not drive policy.
In an interview on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, the Levelling Up Secretary said that while “arithmetic is important” he was not “bound by one criterion alone”. Downing Street clarified the remarks, with a spokesman stressing the target remained but it was important to build the right sort of houses.
The exchange exemplified how far Boris Johnson’s Government has backed away from an overhaul of planning rules designed to trigger a stepchange in house building.
Last year, ministers promised the biggest loosening of planning laws for generations, but after a rural Tory backlash the proposals were scrapped.
Instead, in proposals laid before Parliament yesterday, people will be able to block developments they do not like through so-called “street votes”.
The details for how this will work in practice remain unclear, with the legislation simply giving the minister the right to bring in the change.
In yesterday’s interview, Mr Gove acknowledged that the target of 300,000 new homes a year would not be met in 2022. He said: “I think it is critically important that even as we seek to improve housing supply, you also seek to build communities that people love and are proud of.
“It is no kind of success if, simply to hit a target, the homes that are built are shoddy, in the wrong place, don’t have the infrastructure required and are not contributing to beautiful communities.
“I am not bound by one criterion alone when it comes to development. Arithmetic is important but so is beauty, so is belonging, so is democracy and so is making sure that we are building communities.”
Asked if the target had been abandoned, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: “Our target to deliver 300,000 [houses] a year is central to our levelling up mission.
“Those homes need to be good quality, they need to be well-designed and come with the infrastructure that new development needs. That is equally important.
“We’re certainly making progress towards that target. We are at 244,000 a year currently. Some of the measures in this Bill are designed to remove some of the barriers that can gum up planning applications and cause more resistance amongst local communities.”
Robert Jenrick, the former Tory communities secretary who saw his overhaul of the planning system scrapped when he was sacked last autumn, warned the house-building target would be missed by a “country mile”.
Speaking in the Commons Queen’s
Speech debate on Tuesday, he raised concerns that the number of homes built under Mr Johnson’s first year in office would be the “high-water mark” for “several years to come”.
Mr Jenrick said: “It is a matter of the greatest importance to this country that we build more homes.
“Successive governments have failed to do this. We’ve got to get those homes built because we’re letting down hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens. People are homeless today because we’re failing to build those houses. Young people’s rightful aspiration to get on the housing ladder is being neglected because we’re not building those homes.”