‘Get Britain building again’
The government has begun to lay out its plans for how it will deliver much needed new housing to tackle the housing crisis. It is not just about bricks and mortar: growth of the housing sector affords economic opportunities, creates communities and can make a real difference to people’s lives when they escape from the trap of insecure and expensive rentals and live in decent, safe, secure, and affordable homes.
The government’s aspirations are based on its manifesto pledge to update the National Policy Planning Framework, now completed, to restore mandatory building targets for local authorities in order to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housing for a generation.
Greenbelt or greybelt?
The new policy involves a shake-up of planning rules, requiring councils to build on low quality ‘greenbelt‘ areas, where necessary. It would prioritise building on brownfield sites first, and then, more contentiously, on areas of green belt land deemed to be of lower quality, often called ‘greybelt’ sites. Examples include scrubland, abandoned fuel stations, car parks or deserted shopping centres within the existing greenbelt. Plans to develop brownfield and greenbelt land alike have historically been met with local opposition. Under the new plan, these sites will become in effect brownfield areas, defined as land that has already been built on, to free up land for house building with the stipulation that half the dwellings built in the grey belt must be affordable homes. These are homes for sale or rent for people whose needs are not met by the private market.
Concerns raised by local authorities
However, the challenges to meet this target are significant and the government’s plans are not without their critics. While local authorities have largely welcomed the proposals, some have raised alarms already, describing the targets for new housing as unrealistic, in terms both of the numbers of homes needed, and of what can actually be built and where. Some say that they are being set up to fail and argue that much of the problem lies not with the planning system itself but with ‘land banking’ by developers. The leader of Cotswold District Council, Joe Harris, for example, has said that many councils are concerned about the targets being set:
“We all want more affordable housing, but just setting a housing target and saying you’ve got to meet it isn’t addressing the core issues that strangle housing – land availability, developers land banking, and the perilous financial situation many councils are in.”
The construction industry
The building industry, too, has broadly welcomed to government’s plans while highlighting issues that need to be resolved to reach this target. The Home Builders Federation (HBF), the trade body for the house building industry in England and Wales, points to the problem of low take up of Section 106 Affordable Housing. This they say is caused by a combination of factors including increasing costs, new biodiversity demands and planning delays as well as a reluctance by Housing Associations to take up this housing in an uncertain financial climate.
Global materials shortages because of the pandemic and subsequent price inflation have proven to be another significant barrier for builders.
Also, there is the issue of skill shortages, arising from a combination of factors including lack of training, an ageing workforce and the impact of Brexit. Barratt Redrow chief executive, David Thomas, when asked by the BBC if there were enough workers to build the extra homes promised, said “The short answer is no.” For every 10,000 new homes to be built, the sector needs about 30,000 new recruits across 12 trades, according to the HBF.
Local opposition: NIMBYS V YIMBYS?
These terms are often bandied about in debates about where to build new homes. “Not in my back yard” (NIMBY) advocates are often depicted as selfish, voluble, middle-class people who are violently opposed to any new house building under any circumstances in their area, seeing new housing as a blot on their beautiful landscape, fearful that development will have an adverse effect on property prices. By contrast, YIMBY stands for “yes in my back yard”. It is a campaign for more housebuilding, and more infrastructure, even on once-sacred spaces such as the green belt. It has many adherents in the new intake of young Labour and Liberal Democrat MPs, often in marginal seats, some of whom are motivated by their own experience of punishingly high mortgages or insecure rentals. It also has fervent backers in cabinet, such as Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner.
The debate is in reality more nuanced than these terms suggest. Recent research reveals that opposition to new development is not so clear cut. A recent article by Jake Lynch provides an excellent example of the challenges of where to build, in Oxford, concluding that “the policy risks being soured in the public mind not by NIMBYism, but by perceptions of injustice in the allocation of pain and gain. And, if replicated in towns and cities across the country, that might bring trouble to Labour’s doorstep”
The urgency of building new social housing
There are currently about 1.3 million people in England waiting for a social home according to the National Building Federation. The depletion of the social housing stock has its roots in the Thatcher right to buy policy. Shockingly as revealed in an open letter from Shelter to Liz Kendall and Bridget Phillipson, in 2024, there were 151,630 homeless babies, children and teenagers living in a state of uncertainty in damaging temporary accommodation, often in slum-like conditions. Also, there are those living in insecure, expensive and often poorly maintained rental accommodation. Social rent is the only genuinely affordable tenure for many who will never be able to afford to buy a home.
Facing the real challenge
While the government acknowledges the scale of ambition required to meet its house building target, it is difficult to see how it can be achieved in the life of this parliament without additional financial support. It is also vital that new development has the essential infrastructure to support it: water and sewage, public transport, roads, hi-speed broadband etc. The most urgent need is a new generation of social housing to deliver 90,000 social rent homes a year. It is unlikely that private developers will deliver by themselves. Councils need the means to build genuinely affordable homes too
The housing crisis has been 40+ years in the making and needs radical policies to solve it, not tinkering with a broken system.
We want to hear your views. Please send any comments to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
