Meet the new boss?
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the date of the next General Election had been announced given the recent quasi-campaigning from the Labour Party, what with its ‘5 Missions for a Better Britain’ launch and Sir Keir Starmer popping up all over the place telling us to ‘vote for me, I’ll set you free’ (like they all do).
Writ large in all this is Labour asserting that it is now the party of home ownership, and that it will “back the builders, not the blockers”.
Generally a lot of the proposals seem, superficially, rather sensible. For example, boosting social housing would help relieve the besieged private rental sector. Setting housing targets – the abandonment of which has been much decried – would focus the minds of local planning authorities (LPAs) on what they have to deliver, rather than what they’d prevent. And revisiting the Green Belt and reclassifying brownfield and the ‘not green’, like car parks, car washes, and derelict or unused commercial buildings, would make room in areas which are currently treated as sacred spaces.
The trouble with all this is that it seems certain that Sir Keir and crew, should they find themselves in a position to form a new government, will end up in the same bind as the current administration.
If Sunak and Gove ever had any serious intentions to address the housing market, they have been hobbled by many of their Right Honourable Friends who have gone full NIMBY, following pressure from anti-development constituents, and stymied any attempt to liberalise planning. These are among the “blockers” to which Starmer refers.
His problem is that plenty of his own MPs, not least members of the shadow cabinet, also turn out to be blockers, with track records of objecting to development in their constituencies. It is difficult to see how he can square the circle of planning reforms being announced by those that resist them and seek to prevent enactment. The attitude to the Green Belt is confused too, with his saying he “will allow more housing on the Green Belt” while the party Twitter feed asks people “Do you want developers building on your green spaces without your say?”
Furthermore, Labour appears to have also fallen into the Conservatives’ ‘let locals decide’ trap by arguing that local areas should “make sure enough homes are being built”, backed with all manner of ‘it’s up to communities’ rhetoric. While we all know that the community voice is often dominated by activist Resident Associations and pliable ward councillors who pretty much object to everything that crosses the LPA’s desk.
So once again, as with the current Government, we have a set of housing proposals that are inherently contradictory and, ultimately, lend sway to the blockers, not the builders. If Sir Keir does get the big job, along with whoever will be minister responsible for housing, it looks like it’ll be Sunak and Gove all over again.
Editor: Johnny Dobbyn
