Let’s not squander the chance to build the homes that Britain needs

Building houses is always a contentious business... It’s an issue where our free-market instincts and belief in aspiration and opportunity collide with our desire to conserve and to protect

My grandad used to tell the story of when he bought his first home in Manchester, just after the war. He remembered the pride he felt the first time he watched the rent collector miss his gate and walk on to the next property. That was a lifetime ago, but I believe the desire to own your own home remains undimmed. Yet it’s still too hard a road for young people and families.

We’re letting the next generation down if this is the best we can do.

The good news on house building is that, as a result of the efforts of this Government, it is at the highest levels in my lifetime, with almost 250,000 homes delivered in the past year. In fact, despite the all-consuming nature of the pandemic, we achieved more in 2020 than in any year in living memory.

We created a modern, flexible system that enables a hairdressers to become a cafe, or an empty shop, a town centre home; allowed people to demolish and rebuild derelict eyesores as good quality housing; enabled homeowners to build upwards so their homes could grow as their families did too; created a right to buy unused public sector land and give it new purpose; and swept away archaic rules to facilitate the al fresco dining revolution.

But we must go further still. It’s clear there’s little political appetite for binding housing targets, and the public rightly want to be closely involved in planning decisions. But that doesn’t mean we should shrug our shoulders and give up on modernising and improving our uniquely complex and slow planning system. We can do so in a way that helps deliver net zero, more infrastructure investment, and more local democracy, such as giving residents the right to vote for changes in their neighbourhood.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to continue improving the system is to build a more competitive housing sector, less dominated by a few large and very profitable builders. It’s the complexity that cements their position and holds back smaller businesses.

Building homes is always a contentious business and understandably so – it impacts our biggest investments, our local communities and our uniquely special built and natural environment. For Conservatives, it’s an issue where our free-market instincts and belief in aspiration and opportunity collide with our desire to conserve and to protect. We can find the right balance and establish a degree of harmony between these noble and conservative objectives.

It’s clear the Prime Minister is determined to build on this momentum. He cares passionately about housing, more than any Prime Minister I’ve known, and as Mayor of London, had a record that his successor can only dream of. As he wrote in the foreword to the planning white paper, we need to “take big, bold steps so that we... can finally build the homes we all need and the future we all want to see”. That can be done in different ways, but I know he and my successor won’t want that to slip through our fingers. Young people and families deserve nothing less.