When is planning reform not actually planning reform?
Labour's housing rhetoric is bold and refreshing. Meanwhile its policy remains thin and worrisome.
The Labour Party ruined my birthday. Back in August, The Times reported that “new towns are [the] building blocks of Labour’s plan for UK growth”. Immediately, I was excited - a host of new towns to accompany the sweeping planning reform that the Labour Party is drawing up! Happy Birthday to me!
The promise of taking a bulldozer to our discretionary and antiquated planning system was dangled before me. Sweeping supply side reforms unleashing pent up investment, growth, and therefore tax revenues that would no doubt go a long way to mitigate the damage the Labour Party’s core interventionist philosophy may cause elsewhere. And the more comprehensive this supply boost is, the better for the country it will be.
Indeed, it’s possible to imagine Labour atoning for the party’s original sin, the Town and Country Planning Act - a last vestige of state control bequeathed to us by the country’s most damaging Prime Minister, Clement Attlee.
But just as the party set me up for birthday delight with bold promises of a planning overhaul, they brought me crashing back down. Beneath the headlines, the plan was diluted to “a handful of “nationally significant” developments in areas with potential for high economic growth” - with the article making clear Labour insists “they will not water down local residents’ rights to object to new homes”.
The row-back appeared to have begun.
As the Centre for Cities’ Ant Breech wrote at the time, “Labour's conception of planning reform seems to be 'how do we make the existing planning system work better’”, rather than changing the framework’s sclorid1 fundamentals.
Indeed this approach of piecemeal intensification, decreed centrally for hyper-specific areas is precisely the approach that Michael Gove is taking with his Cambridge New Quarter plans, as well as urban intensification of Leeds and East London.
In many ways it’s an admission of the failures of the UK’s veto ridden discretionary planning system as it exists today, that in order to get things built, development corporations must be established which temporarily override the very bad system we have but only in very specific locations.
The problem with the model of a highly restrictive planning system save for specific government designated areas of construction, is that we’ve tried it before. Eventually these specific new town policies get reduced to nothing too. As Sam Watling’s wonderful and comprehensive history of British planning reveals, the postwar New Towns programme died a death in 1957 thanks to local opposition.
Now, ironically, despite being miles apart on rhetoric Labour and Tory policy is now practically identical.
On the green belt Labour says it will recategorise industrial land and the party deserves real credit for that, yet while the Tories pretend to have frozen said green belt in aspic, they have already admitted Cambridge New Town will be built on top of it.
And urban intensification through development corporations is precisely what both the Tories and the Labour Party have committed to in order to deliver top down developments, mostly (sensibly) attached to high productivity urban areas. The only difference is the “handful” of mystery new towns the country will be treated to under a Labour government. Oh and a paltry extra 300 planning officers, across the country.
Where will these new towns be plonked? Ah that’s the fun bit. Labour simply won’t say. A commission will be established to scout for areas in which they may be built, but only after the next election.
This of course means we’re in for the most almighty row about where any new town may go. Without the authority of specific areas being backed by a winning manifesto, the inter-MP scrapping over potential new town locations will make rows over HS2 look positively placid.
And here’s the rub - anything not explicitly set out by the Labour Party before the election will (perhaps justifiably) not be seen as democratically endorsed. We’re in for the most almighty of battles - not just with MPs, but from organisations with acronyms too. Just remember how incensed the RSPB became when Liz Truss suggested building some houses in 38 ‘Investment Zones’.
The RSBP (1.2m members), Wildlife Trust (1m members), National Trust (5m members), all ferociously snuffed out Liz Truss’s targeted areas of planning reform.
The RSPB even went on to brand Michael Gove, Therese Coffee, and Rishi Sunak “LIARS” who are “reneging on environmental promises” when they tried to loosen recently implemented rules on phosphates and nitrates in order to unblock the construction of over 100,000 extra homes.
This is not even to mention the tenacious CPRE, who argued investment zones with rules based rather than discretionary planning would “threaten many of our most loved landscapes”, the habitats directive, and all sorts of nature commitments.
The “nature commitments” it refers to are of course the sort of obligations that mean a former cement works in Ebbsfleet (with a 20 minute rail connection to central London) cannot be built upon thanks to a rare species of spider recently being discovered.
The spiders moved in after the land was abandoned, with Natural England explaining industrial processes “have left an incredible assortment of grassland, scrub, wetlands, grazing marsh and saltmarsh habitat, providing ideal conditions for a unique variety of wildlife.”
Yes, really, ‘rare’ spiders that moved in to former industrial wasteland are now preventing brownfield regeneration. And mass member interest group after mass member interest group go out of their way to defend the regulations that deliver this anti-growth clown show.
As James O’Malley highlighted last year Ebbsfleet had rushed to apply to be designated an ‘investment zone’ under Truss, in order to streamline its nightmare planning conundrum.
The all party anti-growth coalition is strong. Without clear manifesto commitments, and the ability to point to democratic legitimacy for each inevitably controversial decision, it will be stronger still.
Liz Truss’s planning reform was of course defeated. Just as Robert Jenrick’s ‘Planning for the Future’ White Paper was two years before (described by Keir Starmer’s Labour as a developers’ charter), and the substance of Nick Boles’ proposals in the coalition era were defeated too.
Labour has set itself up for big battles after its inevitable election victory. And despite offering details about the specifics of new towns - for example that they must be “high quality, well-designed and sustainable”, big announcements miss out on the basics, such as where these towns will actually be.
The Party would make life a lot easier for itself by being less ambiguous before the country goes to the polls.
The specifics unveiled by Angela Rayner in her big speech today were fivefold:
“Developers who deliver on their obligations to build high-quality, well-designed and sustainable affordable housing, with green spaces and transport links and schools and GPs’ surgeries nearby, will experience a new dawn under Labour.”
The Deputy Leader and Shadow Housing Secretary explained each new development must deliver:
40% affordable housing.
Characterful and beautiful design codes.
High density housing.
Guarantees of new transport links, healthcare and schools.
Green spaces.
To me they seem like a lovely wish list - and it’s hugely encouraging to see beautiful design codes and high (let’s hope gentle) density housing with green spaces at the heart of it all. (They should really just commission Create Streets to deliver design codes for every new development).
Where this list starts to look less lovely is on the cost front. There is of course a tidal wave of private investment itching to build build build, so much so that in areas of enormous land value, big chunks of development profits can fund subsidised housing and infrastructure. Yet by the same token the lower the land value, the less true this becomes.
As soon as you go out beyond central London, the economics of subsidising almost half of the houses you are building starts to look unviable, especially if it comes with the cost of new infrastructure, schools, and hospitals tacked on too.
This wish list probably works in London’s Zone 1. But in the middle of nowhere these ‘affordable housing’ impositions are not a viable formula to get housing built. Let alone much needed infrastructure.
You’d think if a development was funding new infrastructure it should not also be obliged to deliver subsidised housing. After all, we should remember that in large part ‘affordable (subsidised) housing’ exists as a get out clause for politicians who do their darndest to prevent market rate housing becoming affordable.
At around 17% of total stock, the UK has the fourth highest rate of subsidised housing in the OECD. Far higher rates than countries with far cheaper housing like France or Norway.
Given we proportionally have so much subsidised housing why are waiting lists so long? Why does it feel like we have such a shortage? Because we have a severe lack of market rate housing. Four million behind the average European country.
This pushes people who we should except to be engaged in the housing market onto waiting lists for subsidies instead. The pro-growth way to make these waiting lists shorter is by building much much much more market rate housing, so more people can afford to live without reliance on state subsidy.
To say we simply need more ‘affordable housing’ is to let politicians off the hook on their failure to fix planning and failure to allow more normal homes to be built.
It’s a lowest common denominator strategy. We have reached the point where homes that are basic in other countries are described as “luxury apartments for the super wealthy” in Britain. They’re only for the wealthy because we’re not building enough of them!
Study after study after study has found how new market rate, even luxury housing creates a chain effect. People who buy fancy new housing move out of the ever so slightly less fancy housing they were living in, suddenly making what was once the top property in the market available for someone lower down the wealth ladder, who in turn vacates their old property. This effect goes on and on, as Tim Lee of Full Stack Economics explains:
Finnish researchers found that this process quickly reaches into lower-income neighborhoods. “For each 100 new, centrally located market-rate units, roughly 60 units are created in the bottom half of neighborhood income distribution through vacancies,” the researchers write. Even more remarkable, 29 vacancies are created in neighborhoods in the bottom quintile of the income distribution.
Recently anti-housing campaigners in Brighton took to their local paper to deliver the most bonkers argument against new housing imaginable. They wrote:
"We have a huge housing crisis and a lack of affordability. This is one of the most expensive cities in the country and the last thing we need is an expensive development that none of our local people can afford to live in.”
Sadly, putting two and two together was beyond the reasoning skills of these campaigners. Normal family homes that were meant to be affordable for regular families are now only available for the super rich in Brighton. Local nimbyism is pushing housing quality down, and rich people into housing that was built for the poor.
Why not let rich people plunge their money into the construction of new homes, thereby freeing up those normal family homes for more normal families? Because the truth is, sadly, it’s not really about affordability at all to many of these campaigners, it’s instead a reflexive attitude against development.
The risk is that with an emphasis on subsidised housing, Labour falls into this trap too. And that the unreasonably high demand of 40% subsided homes in every new development, plus infrastructure demands, high quality materials, no doubt lots of extras like solar panels and swift bricks too… starts to add up to an unviable policy to be delivered through private capital.
The risk is that will all these restrictions (even in the development corporation areas that get around much of the disastrous discretion of the Town and Country Planning Act) hurdles remain too high and far too little housing gets built.
We risk a new Labour government (upon finally selecting a location far from any Parliamentary seat it has happened to win) striding up to developers and asking something a little along the lines of:
"Hello Developer Inc. We would like you to build some houses in the middle of nowhere. These houses must be build expensively, complete with zero carbon standards, nature reserves, and solar panels. You must also fund a new hospital, school, and connect up some new road and rail links. Oh and you have to give away half of these houses for free. Have fun!"
We then risk that after these efforts mostly fail, politicians begin to turn around and say “the market cannot provide the necessary housing!” Then we enter a doom loop of price controls and capital flight.
Well that’s the worst case scenario. I’m concerned about Labour’s commitment to maintain discretion based planning, having explicitly ruling out a system of zoning. I’m concerned about Labour’s apparent underestimation of the power of anti-growth interest groups. I’m concerned that a thin manifesto and lack of crucial detail before an election will bog this all down and water it thin. I’m concerned about unrealistic and unviable affordable housing mandates.
But what are the reasons to be positive?
Labour has moved the dial on green belt reclassification. This is to be applauded. While the Tories do theirs in secret, a big bold open and honest conversation with the country about it is long overdue.
Indeed, the “I am a Yimby” rhetoric is Keir Starmer is to be applauded too. Having promised to “bulldoze” through the planning system, when he fails to do just that his feet will be able to be held to the fire.
And on new towns there is perhaps at least one area where an entirely new town is likely to be highly productive. Policy comms guru James Upsher suggested a site just half an hour from Oxford and 25 minutes from London on the intersection of new HS2 and East West Rail lines.
Of course it makes more sense to densify hyperproductive, hyperexpensive places like London, Cambridge, and Oxford - but this is a roundabout way of doing that too. And given it (at least probably) going to be in a Tory seat, they might even be able to deliver it. There’s even room for some reservoir expansion there too.
Finally, though no proper detail has been announced on this yet, Labour has said that under its proposed Take Back Control Bill, Metro Mayors would be granted "stronger powers over planning and departmental style settlements for housing powers". This could be key to taking contentious decisions out of the hands of highly motivated veto players, with councillors no longer in hock to small loud groups to block everything before them.
Though, as we’ve seen with certain spheres, some mayors can be anti growth too.
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Sclorid - a new word I accidentally invented while writing this piece - a combination of sclerotic and sordid.