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Between all the usual August silly-season news stories about how the Prime Minister makes tea (milk first, apparently) or his go-to Greggs pie (it’s the sausage, bean and cheese melt, since you asked) was something altogether more serious: where the Government plans to build 70,000 of its promised 300,000 new affordable and social homes.
It was one of those ‘good-to-begin-with’ announcements where the headline is impressive but the small print isn’t. It turns out the 300,000 extra homes will take over 10 years to build, even though most analysts say Britain needs that many every year, so we’re getting a dribble of new homes instead of a flood. And the proportion built for housing associations rather than local councils isn’t much changed either, in spite of Andy Burnham’s promises during the Makerfield by-election.
If Andy Burnham’s answer is just to try and push more taxpayer cash at higher pressure through these same narrow, congested arteries of Britain’s planning and construction industries, he’s heading for a political heart attack
This isn’t just an example of politicians campaigning in poetry but governing in prose. It’s the latest in a long line of damp squib announcements that aren’t nearly big or bold enough to get Britain building again. And housing is only part of the problem: we need industrial quantities of new infrastructure and business premises as well. Yet getting anything built in Britain is slower and more expensive than almost every other developed nation. Other countries could have installed gold-plated rails at the price we’re paying for HS2. It costs vastly more to generate and transmit electricity in Britain than in the USA or China. And building new UK homes takes years and costs millions in expensive consultants’ and lawyers’ fees before a single brick is laid.
If Andy Burnham’s answer is just to try and push more taxpayer cash at higher pressure through these same narrow, congested arteries of Britain’s planning and construction industries, he’s heading for a political heart attack. He’s got to unblock our economic circulation first, so it’s fit and ready to handle the pressure.
How? He should start by giving existing home and business property owners in towns and cities the legal ‘Right To Build’ without needing planning permission, providing they follow their local council’s design code so they match the style of the best existing local buildings in the area, and satisfy building safety & heritage protections in the normal way. I outlined how this would work for housing in CapX a few months ago, but now it’s time to apply it more widely.
Then he should simplify our complicated, bureaucratic zoning rules so any business property can be converted for any other type of business, providing it doesn’t disturb, pollute or endanger its neighbours. And replace today’s fiendishly-slow and expensive infrastructure approvals with legally pre-approved permissions for building electricity pylons alongside motorways and dual carriageways; rooftop solar PV arrays on all buildings apart from listed heritage sites; and nuclear generation on all previous nuclear sites too.
And finally, he should put a stop to gold-plated construction red tape by making environment and safety regulators publish the costs and benefits of the rules they impose, so everyone can see which ones work well or badly, and save more human and wildlife lives for less money.
The benefits of these reforms will come quickly, creating a gushing flood of new homes, infrastructure and business premises too. They will nearly double the amount of approved space for homes at a stroke, making it the biggest single creation of new living space and housing wealth for generations rather than a pathetic 10-year dribble of publicly-funded new homes. As the new homes are built, they will steadily reduce housing costs to rent or buy, cutting the cost of living, making home ownership affordable for people under 40 once more, and reducing pressure on taxpayers as housing benefit falls in line with rents as well. Plus they would make today’s hated, centrally-imposed and undemocratic housing targets redundant, so they could be scrapped and deep-pocketed developers would no longer be able to use lawyers to force development on greenfield sites which local people oppose.
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The changes will protect the environment and green belt as well, by switching development and solar farms to existing town and city sites instead of urban sprawl. They will give UK towns and cityscapes back their distinctive local characters as democratic council design codes stop ‘anywhere-ville’ developments of identical, ugly buildings by matching the best of what’s already there instead. They will attract new investment to make run-down town and city centres ‘alive after five’ once more, and encourage smaller local builders to grow bigger by removing the planning delays, complexity, expense and risks which currently favour the biggest firms.
Most fundamental and important of all, these reforms would re-open Britain’s economic arteries so investment and energy can flow freely for the first time in decades, slashing costs, risks and delays on infrastructure, business and housing projects so our economy grows faster. If Andy Burnham really wants to make housing affordable and help left-behind areas to grow faster, this is what he should do.
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