Kane Emerson, Author at Red Brick

Fast wins for more homes: how Labour can champion infill development

The housing crisis remains one of the most pressing issues facing Britain today. With homebuilding at crisis levels, numbers of households in temporary accommodation rising, and young people struggling to get on the property ladder, Labour recognises the urgent need for action.

Labour has a powerful electoral mandate for bold and ambitious home building. There is also a need for fast wins that deliver rapid, sustainable growth in housing supply through smart urban infill development.

Building more homes is critical for economic growth. Every 100,000 additional homes adds around 0.8% to GDP during construction. However, ambitious long-term projects like new towns will take years to bear fruit. That’s why to get results we must pull other quick levers. Three ‘fast win’ policies could boost housing supply in the short to medium term, without requiring additional central government resources.

The Government can create approximately 30,000 new homes per year through carefully planned infill development, enabling residents to expand their homes, and making the most of housing association land. This approach aligns with Labour’s commitment to prioritise brownfield development and create high-quality urban environments.

We can build new homes in the right places through:

Building up: Learning from successful Labour-led initiatives in boroughs like Haringey, the government should set national policy for sympathetic towards upward extensions of existing homes. This will add more living space and create new homes while preserving neighbourhood character.
Street votes: The government can complete the implementation of ‘street votes‘, an initiative based on the Mayor of London’s Outer London initiative with strong centre-left support, empowering communities to bring forward sensitive development through local decision-making. This builds on the principle of community engagement that Labour has long championed.
Estate renewal: By amending national policy through the NPPF or Written Ministerial Statement, the government can make it easier for social landlords to deliver better homes for tenants. Cross-subsidy from new market homes could fund improved council housing for existing tenants and create additional social housing stock.

These policies focus on building more homes in high-productivity areas — breaking down barriers to growth and opportunity. By enabling people to live closer to good jobs, we can reduce commute times, improve quality of life, and cut carbon emissions.

Importantly, these low-key quick win approaches prioritise small and medium-sized builders, create jobs and support local economies. This is infill development done sensitively; enhancing rather than disrupting existing communities.

Labour’s vision for attractive communities is popular with voters. By making use of the potential of brownfield sites and urban areas, we can deliver the homes we need.

A small wins approach has seen success internationally. In the US, reforms to allow ‘granny flats‘ have dramatically increased housing supply in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco. Labour’s government in New Zealand has nearly doubled new housing permits in Auckland through smart infill policies.

By enabling more homes in existing urban areas, we can make better use of infrastructure, support struggling high streets, and improve public transport viability.

Crucially, an approach to infill development prioritises community support and environmental sustainability. A Labour Government can learn from successful Labour local government initiatives like Sadiq Khan’s tenant ballots for estate renewal in London, which have shown strong resident support for carefully planned renewal and delivered thousands of council homes.

Labour’s plan for housing represents a pragmatic, forward-thinking approach to one of Britain’s most pressing challenges. By focusing on rapid, community-supported development in areas of high demand, we can boost economic growth, improve quality of life, and create the homes that Britain desperately needs. This is how we build a fairer, more prosperous country for all.

The promise of New Towns

A new generation of New Towns – tree-lined and with character rooted in local history! Angela Rayner outlined Labour’s ambitions at a UK housing conference in Leeds yesterday. The announcement adds more detail to the headline-grabbing New Towns plan unveiled at the Labour Conference in October 2023.

Housing campaigners have been delighted to see Labour’s priority for tackling the severe shortage of homes in England, but there have been some words of caution from economists on the lessons to be learnt from previous New Towns.

Rayner set out a robust code for Labour’s proposed New Towns with six principles. The boldest is a gold standard of 40% social and affordable housing. Another is a guarantee of public transport and public services such as GP surgeries. The code aims to overcome common objections to new developments with a focus on characterful buildings, incorporating local design, and access to nature and children’s play areas.

There has been some pushback from researchers who worry about the possible locations of New Towns. According to Ant Breach, Associate Director of the Centre for Cities, all “the easy fruit has been picked”. Breach emphasised that “you have to lean into the geography of the economy in Britain.” Others have pointed to the lack of delivery on new community infrastructure in more recent iterations of New Towns. Northstowe is one such example, where over 2,000 residents lack any shops, café or GP surgery.

New Towns such as Milton Keynes have been successful because they have close connections to vibrant existing economies. They attracted new residents with the promise of well-designed new communities with good transport links to job opportunities in nearby cities.

Some of the most successful New Towns are urban extensions to existing cities, such as Edinburgh’s New Town or Barcelona’s Eixample. Less successful New Towns have been poorly located with no such links to jobs nearby or there were already lots of local housing options already. Skelmersdale and Cumbernauld are often mentioned as New Towns that struggled to thrive for these exact reasons. The key is location, location, location.

New homes in Britain are difficult to build in part due to complex and lengthy planning processes. New Towns can help with that and may even help sidestep the political logjams that currently block homes. One motivation for New Towns is that Labour could get the best electoral outcomes by choosing deep rural locations with good rail connections, to avoid controversial measures in the more electorally challenging suburbs.

There are clear lessons from previous plans that New Towns need to be in the right locations and that delivery is a challenge. The Department for Levelling-Up, Housing and, Communities has limited resources, as does Homes England. It will be important to pick New Town sites that deliver the biggest social and economic benefits. Urban extensions of existing unaffordable towns and cities such as York, Oxford and Reading would be a great way to do this. Locations in areas where homes are more affordable, or less unaffordable, such as Nottingham or Stafford, offer less opportunity for land value capture to fund infrastructure and more social housing. Labour’s new commitment on New Towns is a bold proposal to build affordable, plentiful homes. A Labour Government must be focused on delivering homes at scale to tackle Britain’s housing crisis. New Towns can offer hundreds of thousands of people the opportunity to have a home of their own. It can also unlock the economic potential of some of our most constrained cities, helping with housing, jobs and public services across the whole country. The key will be delivery at pace. I have confidence in Angela Rayner to do that.