This week I took part in a lively debate with Housing Minister John Healey. The event was hosted by the Home Builders Federation and as you can imagine the audience was keen to learn how the next government will facilitate more house building.
Now I would say this of course, but housing genuinely represents one of the most progressive areas of policy for us Conservatives. And whilst the stated objective of the fourth Housing Minister I’ve faced is also to build more homes – I am certain that our approach is far more likely to deliver results.
If you’re not familiar with the crisis in housing, then it goes something like this.
During Labour’s rule there have been around 26,000 fewer homes built each year than under the previous two Conservative administrations. Meanwhile housing waiting lists have soared and fewer new homes are being built than at any time since 1924, when Ramsay Macdonald became Prime Minister.
However, there is more going wrong in housing than just the recession. In fact, we know that it is Labour’s top-down targets which have actually done so much to prevent homes being built when and where they are needed. Unsurprisingly, most people rather resent a lack of control over their own neighbourhoods yet that’s precisely what Regional Assemblies and obscure Regional Spatial Strategies mean.
This approach hasn’t worked in the past and even if the property market returned to less turbulent times, all the evidence is that this top-down system can never deliver. So change is needed.
Our progressive approach will scrap the Government’s target led-planning system and replace it with ‘localism’ which will include powerful incentives to ensure that homes are built where they are most needed. Specifically, we will make sure that for every new home built, the local authority will not just collect the council tax on that home, but will also be provided with the same amount of money from the Treasury in a new pound-for-pound match funding system.
Taken together with our Business Rate Uplift bonus, areas that encourage enterprise and growth will benefit financially in a dramatic way. Suddenly local people will get to share the benefit of economic development, making growth a much more appealing prospect.
Rather than dreaming up Whitehall-inspired housing numbers which owe more to tractor production targets in the Ukraine during the Soviet Union, our system will work with the grain of human nature. It is a simple and fair equation for Local Authorities and the people that they represent – if you build more you will be better off.
( 8 comments ) Tags: Business Rate Uplift, Housing, Local Authorities, localism, neighbourhoods
Comment by Stuart Wain on March 14, 2010 at 8:31 pm
The issue of housing targets is a classic for stirring local opinion; I live in Leighton Buzzard and find myself on the receiving end of proposed developments designed to satisfy both Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire targets (on either side of a small town!!). It feels to the people of this area that the decision to build an extra 2000 houses with little or no additional infrastructure will run roughshod over their (largely ignored) concerns. Those making the decision will get the kudos for ‘hitting central government targets’ but will be long gone when the locals are complaining of no Doctor or Dentist places, no seats on the train to London, nose-to-tail traffic through the town and hikes in the rates to support additional services to those new properties. Difficult enough for a wealthy town, catastrophic for a town that does not even have the funds to fill potholes in the road or paint yellow lines to control commuter parking. If Andrew Selous is to hold his seat here, and the Conservatives are to hold Parliamentary control, we need to be assured that decisions that affect a community are made by the community!
Comment by Russell Quirk on March 14, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Transforming housing provision to a community led system which uses carrot not stick is to be applauded. Labour diktat has clearly not worked and the dwellings they pledged have fallen embarassingly short of their promises. Ther ‘one size fits all’ approach has left many neighbourhoods scarred by inappropriate development with residents reeling from the real world effects of Prescott’s maximum parking standards, etc.
Diluting the power of the unaccountable Planning Inspector who has ridden roughshod over local democratic decision making is no bad thing either.
A well thought out, workable approach by Shapps and team.
Comment by TODDY HOARE on March 16, 2010 at 11:17 am
Surely more should be done to identify derelict areas and build on them, esp where property owners and speculators are doing nothing. Beside the A40 in London on the left of the north bound carriageway in the Ealing /Acton area there is whole stretch of derelict land that illustrates my point.
Comment by pat on March 20, 2010 at 9:11 pm
i live in northern ireland and there is a severe shortage of social housing. i was medically retired from the NHS due to disabilities after two sectarian attacks. our MP’s have done nothing to help homeowner’s . i had my childhood stolen due to the conflict in ni, i had a job i loved taken due to sectarian hatred and now i’m losing my home that i worked hard for. yet our MP’s are to busy fighting with themselves. why the rest of the uk have enjoyed a mortgage rescue scheme . we the homeowner’s are enjoying the court’s and eviction’s. so please someone tell me why we should continue to vote for any government who put’s bank’s and loan’s to other forgein countries and war’s before it’s own people. as for the poliction’s in Nothern Ireland can’t even reply to the homeowner’s who have concern’s and now adding to the housing list’s for social housing.
Comment by Michael on March 21, 2010 at 6:30 pm
We are a family,settled living in this house for12 years, we pay rent, and council tax, the children go to school, but the house is council. we find that there are those who live in private estates have not worked it out yet, and measure people on the material things they have, and harbour evil thoughts to others judging others because of house size or where they live with a very unhealthy view and these people don’t see there wrong who judge others, fore they look white on the out side, but are unclean on the inside and have not worked it out and are blind and shallow, and are being deceived by material things, I hope they wake up soon and start to honour people and get it right
Comment by Tinpusher on May 1, 2010 at 11:15 am
The shortage of Affordable Housing is an Election opportunity.
Radical problems deserve radical solutions.
Situation
Although development of low-cost housing on Infill-sites in cities, towns and villages should already be underway, there are many thousands of hamlet sites which could be used as starter homes for local people.
Government aid for social housing is constrained in the present economic climate.
Problem
The people owning this land are neighboring farmers and landowners. Some may even be represented on planning boards, and all appear to prefer to shelter the countryside rather than the population. An element of retentive selfish nimbyism exists.
Solution
Compulsory land- purchase by local authorities at agricultural rates. Open-tender land sales to local builders at residential rates. The profit proceeds to be openly used by local authorities to provide gazetted low-cost mortgages to local housebuyers.
Benefits
Everybody wins, except those currently standing in the way of a democratic way forward, and they are not going to starve.
Urgency
Please ask your Party to consider this in their final manifesto – you’ll win the respect of young country people.
Thank you for listening.
Comment by michael walter on May 4, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Hi i am a ex-service man married with to kids and working for a education company working for the M.O.D .
i live in a private rented housing which i had to rent to relocate near to my employment but i have been trying to get council rented property for 18 months as the cost of living keeps going up as labour ae useless.
but the council in medway say that i am in the low band so i could be waiting longer but some one on benifits or some one who does not come from our great nation will get the property before me as i am a hard working british man who has served his queen and country will the tories change this labour goverment soft approach to the benfit scroungers and start looking after the british hard working man and woman.
Comment by investments Vietnam on May 18, 2010 at 4:32 am
We hope that they will find good solutions on how we should live up to the demands of the housing policies.