Offering his thoughts ahead of the general election, Coverdale Barclay’s account director Alexander Peel welcomes the fact that housing has been steadily climbing the political agenda – but thinks there are more ambitious changes to the planning system that should be on the cards.
In the last few weeks, there have been multiple opinion pieces bemoaning the major political parties’ lack of focus on housing in their manifesto commitments and campaigning.
I don’t think this is entirely fair.
To my mind, this is the first election where housing has actually occupied a substantial part of the discussion. This is something of a novelty when it comes to policy – as anyone who has had to manually (and usually in vain) search the phrases “housing”, “homes” or “rent” in the last few budget Red Books can attest.
In the run-up to the election, all the main parties have spoken about housing at length, with most recognising the desperate need to build more homes.
Most have acknowledged that a lack of housing has huge second- and third-order consequences – such as a low birth rate, low economic growth and social inequality (a compelling version of this argument can be found in ‘The housing theory of everything’ published by Works in Progress).
Indeed, the Conservative’s manifesto launch was accompanied by an op-ed in The Telegraph, penned by Rishi Sunak himself, positioning his party as the party that would make home ownership affordable.
The issue is that most of the policies touted are little more than a sticking plaster on what is a deep structural issue. In fact, some of the suggestions – particularly demand-side reform such as Help to Buy 2.0 (or 3.0, depending on how you count it) – may in fact serve to exacerbate the affordability problem by increasing competition for a limited resource.
Labour and the Conservatives have ambitions to build at least 300,000 homes a year over a five-year period. But neither party has been entirely truthful about what the two biggest barriers are to delivering this many houses – a restrictive planning system and, relatedly, our constituency-based parliamentary model.
Nobody MP wants to be seen as the one who allows the new development next door – regardless of the many benefits it might bring – and our planning system is very good at allowing politicians to block development on spurious grounds.
Sir Eric Pickles made this point recently at an event hosted by think tank Reform, in which he recalled local authorities resisting devolved powers on housing and development as it would mean they could no longer blame an overzealous central government for anything that was built in their area.
Labour has, admittedly, said it would use Compulsory Purchase Orders to get new towns built – and has hinted, through use of the phrase “grey belt”, that there might be parts of the green belt that should have looser planning restrictions. It has also more recently said it would update the National Planning Policy Framework – but is light on detail. There seems to be a distinct lack ambition for root and branch reform.
There are, however, local authorities that have made huge progress in development and regeneration using existing powers. Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation (MDC) is one such example. The MDC’s use of powers devolved to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has enabled it to deliver homes (as well as offices, retail and transport infrastructure) at scale – which has made a tangible difference to the lives of Stopfordians and heralded the town as the “best place to live in the north west”, as the BBC reports.
The MDC has been so successful, that Mayor Andy Burnham promised to replicate the model across Manchester’s other towns in his latest manifesto (on which he was re-elected).
The issue is that these powers are not afforded to every local authority.
For the time being, then, the planning system is the one we will have to work with. And while many a property industry professional’s dream of planning reform may not materialise in the next parliament – at least we’re talking seriously about housing.
