Sometimes, a column intro just falls into your lap. On searching for the text of Keir Starmer’s speech this week – in which he railed against “Nimbys”, “naysayers” and “blockers” – Google presented me with the contact details for Starmer Solutions, a Leicester-based home improvement and construction company. At time of writing, its website is down.
The Prime Minister used the speech, which his outriders would like you to know is definitely not a reset, to outline the goals by which he wants his government to be judged. Some of the new targets – raising living standards, reducing NHS waiting lists, more active and visible policing – seem sensible enough, if only because they’re things for which the government is going to be judged whether it admits to it or not. Others, like better early years education or the promise to put the country on course for 95 per cent clean power by 2030, are more about defining a narrative around a government that’s frequently lacked one.
The planning pledge, perhaps uniquely, is both. By fast-tracking decisions on at least 150 major national infrastructure projects to the existing promise of 1.5 million new homes, this parliament will provide a clear dividing line with the stasis that took hold under a Conservative government beholden to the grey vote. But there’s a reason this ultra-cautious Labour party has put this potentially contentious promise at the centre of its agenda, even when Nimbyism remains upsettingly popular: there’s also growing evidence to suggest that failing to build the homes or infrastructure we need is to blame for the fact that Britain’s productivity has slumped. Making it easier for companies to grow, or workers to live near the best jobs, will deliver higher living standards and more money for public services, too. The new pledge, Starmer said, will “send a very clear message… Britain says yes… whether you like it or not”.
Stirring stuff – but I’m not sure that message is quite as clear as the Prime Minister would have us believe. Sure, moving forward with onshore wind farms and other projects of national importance was among the government’s earliest and most forthright moves. Early though it is, there are already unnerving signs that, when it comes to housing, it’s not going far enough to even get near its target.
Consider a report published this week by the Centre for Cities, under the mildly ominous title of “Restarting Housebuilding I”. (This volume concerns planning reform and the private sector; the sequel considers the role of social housing and, one assumes, the story of how the planning system first arrived here from Italy.) It notes that the government has focused on incremental “small-r” reforms to the planning system: amending the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF); redefining uglier, less green bits of the green belt as “grey belt”, to make people less defensive of them; and promising “Brownfield Passports”, which provide default approval for planning applications on certain previously developed land.
All these things will probably help. But the Centre for Cities analysis found that, even if they’re enough to get England building at the fastest rate since the war – achieved in 2000-22 in London, in 1950-79 elsewhere – these reforms would get us not quite 75 per cent of the way to the target, leaving the government nearly 400,000 homes short. Perhaps the housebuilding firms will build at a hitherto unknown speed. It would be an optimistic government that relied on that assumption.
What is to be done? One option – a big factor in previous eras of building, explored in more detail in volume II – would be a huge ramp up in council housebuilding. While the government does have ambition in that area, it’s not clear how much of a contribution it can make in an era when vacant land is less available, existing housing stock requires expensive maintenance, and councils are record-breakingly broke.
And so, the think tank’s report concludes that the best option is a more radical reform of the post-war planning system than the government has so far seemed willing to countenance. One big change could be more extensive green belt release around commuter stations: under 2 per cent of the green belt could provide two million homes.
The most consequential reform, though, would be to replace the current “discretionary planning system” with “zoning”. At the moment, every project is considered by council planning committees individually. That’s not only expensive and time-consuming: it provides Nimbys with lots of opportunities to make their feelings known, and makes politicians instinctively Nimbyish, too. Under a zoning-based system, communities would get their say at the point that the rules are set. Once they are, though, any project that meets certain standards will be waved through. More certainty and less expense for builders; less noise from the Nimbys.
This wouldn’t just increase the number of homes built (although it would). Apart from anything else, a simpler planning system would be easier for small builders without deep pockets to navigate. It could also change the mindset in which people think they have a right to say no to building projects, in a way they never would with other bits of public policy. It would end obscene spectacles like brownfield land near inner London tube stations left vacant for years, because of vexatious complaints from local homeowners. If Keir Starmer really does want to show that Britain is building, whether people like it or not, he should reduce the opportunities they have to block.
[See also: America’s impotent elite]
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