How do the chief executives of major housebuilding companies tend to vote? It is a pretty safe bet that the answer has been Conservative for much of the last 15 years. However, a series of recent events may have changed that.
Firstly, the Tories have abandoned their traditional stance on housebuilding. The party that once promised bold reforms to the planning system has massively diluted, and some would argue torpedoed, those proposals. It has also made its once mandatory housing targets advisory.
“Those proposals would have significant effects, one of which would be to weaken the power of councils and appeal inspectors to grant permission for housing on land, which has not been earmarked in the local plan for residential development, because a council has a deficit in its five-year housing supply,” explains Tracy Lovejoy, senior associate solicitor at Irwin Mitchell.
As for Labour, the party has historically been criticised for failing to show enough policy leg, but when it comes to housing and planning, that no longer appears to be the case following a speech to the British Chambers of Commerce by leader Sir Keir Starmer last month.
In the speech, Starmer pledged to reform the planning system and streamline the process for national infrastructure projects and commercial development. He also pledged to reimpose housing targets and “remove the veto used by big landowners to stop shovels hitting the ground”. The party would “choose the builders, not the blockers”, he added, and would give “the communities and nations of this country the right powers to drive private sector growth and to get their high streets growing again, [including] new powers for councils to take over empty retail units”. Labour would level the retail playing field with online, he continued. “We will scrap and replace business rates,” he said.
As BE News reported last month, house builders and developers were falling over each other to declare their support for the proposals, despite the lack of detail. For them, the promise to reinstate housing targets was manna from heaven. The fact that bold planning reform was also mentioned was the cherry on top.
The speech was even welcomed by planning experts, who benefit less directly from the proposed changes and have become sceptical of politicians’ planning pledges. “This was big, bold and brave stuff,” says Grant Leggett, executive director and head of Boyer London.
“It wasn’t surprising to hear Labour want to become the party of home ownership, but I didn’t expect their opening official salvo on it to be so strong. I think Starmer will have won a lot of support from the development industry.”
Leggett was particularly surprised by Starmer’s comments that the green belt should be built on “where appropriate” to make housing more affordable. “Labour clearly think they can win an election with this sort of policy approach but they must also recognise the risks of saying some of the things Sir Keir has said about developing the green belt,” he says.
“That is sensitive stuff, but I expect he’s calculated that the people it will upset the most are mostly Conservatives anyway, and he’ll win support from the enormous development industry and its supply chain, and younger people frozen out of home ownership.”
Roger Hepher, executive director at hgh, agrees. “It is refreshing to hear Starmer recognising that something has to be done to address the housing crisis, that economic growth is important and planning has an important role to play, and that the green belt is not a sacred cow,” he says.
“There is, of course, plenty of distance between statements of intent like this and practical measures on the ground, but you have to start somewhere. It would be great if the current government decided to seize the advantage by taking this set of policies and making them their own, but sadly that seems relatively unlikely to happen.”
However, even Leggett has his doubts about Starmer and his team’s grasp of the details – although he acknowledges these are policy proposals aimed at a future manifesto rather than a white paper or proposed legislation or regulatory change. “What surprises me – and without being critical of the overall message which I support – is that he and presumably those advising him still don’t really seem to get what they’re talking about,” he says.
“I need to give the guy a break – I live and breathe this stuff every day so am perhaps being a bit picky. But picking apart some of his statements, he’s pledged to reimpose housing targets [when] they’ve not been removed yet. He also seems to conflate the green belt with open countryside and AONB [areas of outstanding natural beauty] and I think his opponents will now scaremonger that he plans to pave over the entire Lake District and destroy habitats and so on.”
He adds: “All this indicates to me that part of the reason people don’t engage in planning and solving the housing problem is they just don’t get it. People don’t understand what the green belt is or what it’s for, for example, or that great parts of it are not green or picturesque.”
Planning lawyers are less effusive, but still seemingly see Labour’s proposals as having a coherence that Conservative plans lack. “The Labour party’s stance is pro-development, especially in relation to housebuilding, and this is consistent with its aspiration to set a target home ownership rate of 70%,” says Lovejoy.
“Labour would, if they come into power, reinstate the need for local councils to demonstrate a five-year housing supply and, according to their draft policy programme, support prospective homeowners, including first time buyers, as well as redistribute demand away from people looking to speculate on house prices and increase stamp duty for foreign buyers.”
However, Lovejoy agrees that Labour needs to set out its stall more clearly, particularly when it comes to housing and affordability. “I have not seen much about affordability of housing in either the draft programme or the sound bites,” she says.
“This issue is addressed, to one extent or another, in most local plans. It would be good to see Labour, in the run up to the general elections, delve into this issue more and the perception that the new houses that are being built are out of the financial reach of many.”
She also has her concerns about the impact of loose talk on planning reform in the heat of a general election campaign. “It is important for any political party to avoid short-term changes and the dissemination of rash ideas – using phrases such as ‘doom-loop’ or ‘broken system’ – because of the potential to slow down or even cause panic in the planning industry,” she says.
Broadly speaking, the reaction to Starmer’s speech and Labour’s nascent policy platform has been positive. As ever, the devil is in the detail, though, and the big question is whether he’ll win the election and get the chance to flesh out that detail.
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