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Ed’s error – opening the social housing allocations can of worms

I supported Ed Miliband for the Labour leadership and I firmly believe he will become the next Prime Minister.  But in my policy area, housing, I think he has just made a major policy error.  His people should realise that you’re politically in the wrong place when you share territory with Tory Westminster Council.  In the land of Lady Porter they have been looking to export their poorest people for many years, long before the Coalition’s housing benefit policies were described by Boris Johnson as ‘Kosovo-style cleansing’.  By stressing employment as a factor in social housing allocation, Westminster’s new housing allocations policy is just a more extreme version of what Ed is suggesting.
Regrettably, a couple of Labour boroughs have also taken up the theme that they have too many unemployed and poor people and that they should live somewhere else (where? is not a question they ever answer).  Now they have cover – the Labour Leader approves that they should by allocating homes to people who make some kind of vague contribution to society.
As with the argument about evicting rioters whose family are council tenants, there is no rhyme or reason as to why this special preference should be targeted at social housing.  Why isn’t it a requirement in other policy areas as well?  For example, only people who make a contribution to society should get free health care or have their bins collected or go to Oxford or get pension tax relief or be able to drive on motorways.
On these grounds, bankers, journalists, many politicians and anyone called Murdoch would fail to qualify for any services at all.
Over many years politicians and the media have been good at saying who should get social housing.  But ultimately, with extreme shortage, if you want to change priorities it is dishonest just to say who you think should get the homes: you also have to say who will NOT get them as a result of your new policy.  Vague statements, reminiscent of the old distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor, or the poor we like versus the poor we don’t like, make bad policy.
Anyone who has ever been involved in the process of housing allocations knows that only people in extreme and acute housing need get anywhere near being allocated a social home.  I would set Ed Miliband a test: go into an allocations department, look through the cases, meet up with the people concerned and then pick the family that will not get a home because you have decided to allocate it to someone who has less housing need but meets some test of their ‘contribution’.
Allocating extremely scarce housing has to be done transparently against clear rules, and judgements are often subject to Ombudsman cases or judicial review.  So vague principles are not enough.  How many points will ‘being in a job’ be worth compared to being overcrowded to the point where your health is failing and your children are falling behind at school?  How many points will ‘being a school governor’ get compared to having a severe disability and high medical priority?  How will you deal with people who were in work but had to give up because of redundancy or age or illness?  Will you revert to the 1950s test where inspectors came round to judge your housekeeping standards before you got a home?
Believe me, Ed, this is a can of worms you will regret ever opening.  And I suspect you only got into it because it is a policy where it feels like you can make change without it costing anything.
There has been a lot of talk at Labour Conference this year about offering apologies for the failures of the last government.  New affordable housebuilding was the Titanic of policy failures, only addressed towards the end of our term: if we want to impress the electorate with our housing policies we have to talk about how we can build hundreds of thousands of additional homes in the future.  Rearranging the deckchairs on the housing allocations sub-deck is a futile gesture and a diversion from the real issues in housing

This post has also appeared on LabourList at
http://labourlist.org/eds-error–opening-the-social-housing-allocations-can-of-worms
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LP Conference: housing policy comes centre stage on Thursday

As we have reported on Red Brick already, housing has been a big theme at this year’s Labour Party Conference.  Much of the discussion has been good and positive – although unfortunately not all.  The housing debate will come to the main Conference on Thursday morning.  There will be a debate around a ‘composite’ housing motion (ie assembled into one from a number of motions submitted by Labour Party organisations) and it is likely to be moved by Graham Martin from the Labour Housing Group Executive.  There will also be a speech from Caroline Flint.
The debate should be carried live on the BBC Parliamentary Channel (which I much prefer to the BBC2 coverage, where speakers are constantly interrupted by presenters and
commentators who seem to think they are the attraction).
Anyway, to help Red Brick readers follow the debate, below is the composite motion that
will be debated (NB it may be subject to a little grammatical tidying up before Thursday).
I think it is a motion we can all support.
Composite 4 – Housing
Conference notes with alarm the independently-commissioned forecast of the National  Housing Federation (30th August 2011) that the housing market will be plunged into a unprecedented crisis as steep rises in the private rental sector, huge social housing waiting lists, and a house price boom are fuelled by a chronic under-supply of homes.
Conference notes the publication of national house building statistics on 18 August,
showing falling housing starts and completions, and the Home Builders Federation’s ‘Housing Pipeline’ report on 26 August showing that planning permissions for new housing are also falling, the sharp fall in house building to just 23,400 homes last quarter, the 18% jump in homelessness over 12 months and the £1.3 billion pa rise in Housing Benefit payments. In the last five years of Labour Government over 250,000 new affordable homes were delivered in England, while the Tory-led government is aiming to deliver just 150,000 by 2015.
In 2010/11 just 105,000 homes were built in England – the lowest level since the 1920s. These figures are an indictment of the Government which is blind to its inevitable
consequences – increased homelessness and joblessness, rising market rents, and the inability of young and middle aged households the opportunity to either buy or rent a decent home.
Conference believes that by failing to deliver the new affordable housing to buy and to
rent that young people and families need, the Tory-led Government is holding back the aspirations of people up and down the country and failing those in need of social housing.
Conference believes the Government’s plans to abolish secure tenancies, and put social tenants at risk of eviction should they get a promotion or a pay rise will create fear and uncertainty and will create a disincentive to work.
Conference believes that with nearly 2 million households (around 4.5 million people)
nationally on council housing waiting lists and the Tory/Lib Dem government threatening security of tenure, the Government is letting down young people and families who need new affordable homes in the rented sector and in the sales market urgently.
Given the huge increase in housing benefit going to fund private landlords, we also call for a shift of financing of private sector landlord investment away from purchasing existing second hand homes (in competition with first time buyers), and towards investment in New Properties. This will result in an increase in quality supply, and better opportunities for younger and middle aged families to purchase a home.
Conference strongly believes that Labour should be on the side of all those in need of decent affordable housing, whatever their circumstances.  Conference firmly believes that the development of new housing not only meets the needs of our community but is crucial if we are to see the construction sector as a leading player in bringing strong growth back to our economy.
Conference supports measures to tackle the fraudulent sub-letting of social housing, which
deprives many in genuine need of affordable housing, and notes that in Government Labour launched a national crack down on this type of fraud.
Conference welcomes Labour’s initiative to introduce a new tax on bankers’ bonuses to
raise enough money to boost affordable housing supply.
Conference urges the Labour Party to call for a programme of investment in quality new
homes, which will provide employment, generate tax income, reduce homelessness and the cost of emergency accommodation, and reduce expenditure on unemployment and housing benefits.
Conference calls upon Labour’s Shadow Cabinet and the wider Party to make an increase in quality, sustainable, affordable housing supply including social housing and housing for first time buyers, and better opportunities for younger and middle aged families to purchase a home, key themes in policy development, and to prioritise in its housing policy review an allocations policy that is fair to everyone.
Conference resolves that defending the rights of social tenants and the delivery of more
social housing must be campaigning priorities for Labour in opposition.

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For a change, more light than heat on the PRS

Tony has pointed out that amongst the soggy canapés there are loads of meetings and discussions about housing at this year’s Labour conference.  Tomorrow we will find out
what if anything about housing makes the Leader’s speech, but today two of Ed Balls’ key initiatives involved housing: a specific commitment to use a repeat Banker’s bonus tax to fund affordable housing and a new commitment to reduce VAT on maintenance to encourage owners to repair homes.
One meeting Tony didn’t highlight attracted my attention and I went along to a meeting sponsored by New Statesman and the National Landlords Association on the future of the private rented sector.  Although I don’t always agree with what Caroline Flint has to say about social housing, I thought she was spot on in her analysis of the PRS, the need for regulation and how it might work.  I had forgotten that she was Minister when the Rugg Review was commissioned, so she has some background in this issue.  She also rather shamelessly plugged her chapter in the so-called purple book just published by Progress, in which she evidently sets out her views on PRS reform.
Although the NLA seems to favour accreditation rather than registration as the basis of a regulatory system, there was a surprising degree of consensus in the room about what a regulatory system should seek to achieve: an expanding and increasingly professionalised PRS, support and help for good landlords who want to meet good standards, and strong enforcement against bad landlords who exploit tenants and refuse to bring their properties up to scratch.  Despite the presence of several landlords and landlords’ representatives, there was no support from anyone for the current government’s laissez-faire (or is it couldn’t care less?) approach.
I was particularly impressed by a letting agent present in the audience who spoke strongly in favour of registration as the way forward, and there were good contributions on how to achieve longer tenancy terms, especially for families needing security and stability, how to control subsidy flowing to bad landlords through housing benefit, and enforcement by environmental health officers.
Sometimes a discussion hits the right tone of seriousness without ladles of rhetoric and generates more light than heat.  Here was one and I hope there will be more, especially during the housing debate scheduled for Thursday morning – housing was one of the four issues chosen through a ballot of delegates for debate on the floor of the Conference.

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LibDems in denial

They say politics is a rough old trade, but any hope that there might be a frank debate on housing during the Party Conference season were dashed immediately at the LibDem conference in Birmingham.  The line was just to deny that their policies have any downside at all.
LibDem President Simon Hughes MP knows that attack is often the best form of defence.
He set the tone at the start of the week by giving the impression that the worst thing happening in housing at the moment is that Frank Dobson MP is a council tenant, or as Inside Housing quoted Hughes as saying, he lives in ‘a bloody Camden Council flat’.
Then we had Andrew Stunell MP’s subterfuge: trying to pretend that ‘affordable rent’ homes are social housing, stretching credulity to the limit.   He also made much of the Coalition’s efforts to bring empty homes back into use without mentioning Eric Pickles restrictions on the use of Empty Dwelling Management Orders to protect property owners’ ‘fundamental rights’.
Finally we had Pensions Minister Steve Webb MP.  Surely a man with such expertise in
the field of tax and benefits would have something intelligent to say about the housing benefit reforms.  None of it.  His line was that while Labour accused him of adopting a policy akin to the slaughter of the first born, the truth was that cash spending on housing benefit at the end of the Parliament would be the same as at the start, around £22bn.  So
all is well, he is just ‘reigning in the remorseless growth in spending’.  No mention of rent inflation, or of policies, like affordable rent, that are driving up housing benefit costs, or of the increasing caseload of private tenants having to share the available cash, or of the policy of pushing homeless families into the more expensive private rented sector.  And certainly no mention of Boris Johnson’s description of the policy as ‘Kosovo-style cleansing’.
Never can a LibDem audience have been so supine.  It looked to me like they think that
the only hope of political survival is to keep their heads down and claim that they are having influence.  In housing they have nothing to show for their efforts because they have gone along with the Tory agenda in its entirety – the end of social rent, moving towards market rents, reducing tenants’ rights, laissez-faire in the private rented sector.
It will be interesting to see how the Labour Conference pans out.  We are told that there will be honesty about the record in office, which should start with an admission that far too few homes were built.  But this has to lead to new policies that will produce many more homes – market homes and genuinely affordable homes.  There will need to be a radically new approach to capital investment, so I will be paying as much attention to Ed Balls as I will to Caroline Flint.

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Stunell's subterfuge

Andrew Stunell seems such a nice man, and he’s a Methodist Lay Preacher to boot.
But an observer of his speech to the LibDem Conference yesterday might be forgiven for thinking he was stretching the truth just a little.  Given the LibDems good track record in
supporting social housing over many years, and their general embarrassment over the housing policies of the government, I can only assume he was struggling to find anything to say that shows that the LibDems have some influence over Pickles and Shapps.
He started off in the right territory by calling housing the ‘Cinderella’ policy.  “It is one of the most important issues facing the entire country”  he said. “The record of previous governments on social housing was nothing short of a disgrace……Social Housing just wasn’t important enough for the last government.”  Now I agree that far too few social homes in particular were built under Labour, but surely Mr Stunnell realises that you can’t build more social homes with a 60% cut in funding?
But then comes the subterfuge.  “That’s why we’ve introduced the Affordable Rent programme…. we’re on course to build 170,000 new social homes in the next four years…… thanks to Liberal Democrat influence in government, we have a social housing target that we can and will meet…. ..the first government to deliver an increase in social housing during its term of office for more than thirty years.”
So affordable rent is the new social rent.  Despite the fact that they bear no relation to each other at all.  The rents are much higher, up to 80% of market rent, and the terms are not secure.  Not only are new homes to be let at ‘affordable rent’ levels, but many re-lets of existing social rented homes are going to be as well.
Boris Johnson is the expert at smoke and mirrors in terms of housing statistics.  He is
very clever about including almost everything built under the much abused term ‘affordable’.  But even he hasn’t had the gall to claim that affordable rent and social rent are the same thing.  At least not yet.

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Calling all Labour Conference-goers – support LHG contemporary resolution!

Information for all Constituency Labour Parties and delegates attending LP Conference this weekend.
The Conference Arrangements Committee met earlier today to consider the contemporary resolutions submitted by CLPs and affiliates. The CAC decided that the resolution submitted by Labour Housing Group counts as contemporary and will go forward to the Priorities Ballot on Sunday 25 September.
The Labour Housing Group is asking CLPs and their delegates to Party Conference to vote in favour of having Housing as one of the Contemporary Resolutions to be debated.  The Resolution submitted by LHG is below.  The Resolution is ‘contemporary’ because the Government’s relevant figures on the increase in levels of homelessness and unemployment and the dramatic fall in home building were not published until either August or start of September, making the issues ‘contemporary’ according to Party Conference rules.
Tackling the Housing Crisis
We note with alarm the recent sharp jump in unemployment by 80,000 to two and a half million people, the sharp fall in house building to just 23,400 homes last quarter – the 18% jump in homelessness over 12 months and the £1.3 billion pa rise in Housing Benefit payments.
Together, these figures are an indictment of a Government which is ideologically obsessed with cutting investment but is blind to its inevitable consequences –  increased homelessness and  joblessness, rising market rents, and the inability of young and middle aged households the opportunity to either buy or rent a decent home.
We ask Conference to call for an emergency programme of investment in quality new homes, which will provide employment, generate tax income, reduce homelessness and the cost of emergency accommodation, and reduce expenditure on unemployment and housing benefits.
A tax of £1bn a year from Bankers bonuses would cause little hardship to the recipients, and yet could fund around 50,000 extra new homes every year which could be available at well below market rent levels.
Given the huge increase in housing benefit going to fund private landlords, we also call for regulatory change to shift the financing of private sector landlord investment away from purchasing existing second hand homes (in competition with first time buyers), and towards investment in New Properties. This will result in an increase in quality supply, and better opportunities for younger and middle aged families to purchase a home.

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Council housing estates: guilty or not guilty?

The Guardian has made a brave attempt at recording and analysing the riots and their
aftermath.  But looking at their ‘reality check’ feature following Iain Duncan-Smith’s claim that ‘housing estates’ were one of the major factors that contributed to the rioting, I think they are still some way from hitting the nail on the head.
As always, IDS says things that seem to make sense until you look at them properly.  Personally, I find his concern for the poor totally false.  His prescriptions always seem to
involve taking money away from them, as if they can be punished into behaving more as he would like.
The problem with his latest utterance is that he switches between ‘areas blighted by welfare dependency’, ‘underprivileged communities’, ‘housing estates’ and ‘grim council estates’ as if they were one and the same thing.  He warns about social segregation and ghettoisation when most commentators feel his policies will drive us faster in that direction.  And he sees the problem of unemployment as being entirely the failure of ‘benefit dependent’ people to get jobs rather than a statistical deficit of jobs in the market, again made much worse by his policies.
Even so the Guardian took up his theme that housing estates were to blame for the riots, concluding that “It appears there is emerging evidence to support Duncan Smith’s claim that there are links between estates, the people that live on them and this summer’s violence.”
Like IDS, the Guardian’s analysis also switches between deprived areas, estates and council estates without differentiating between them.  Deprivation in some places is increasingly a feature of the private rented sector, and we are often reminded that half the poor are home owners.  They don’t consider the differences between housing association and council estates – does a council estate that has been transferred to a housing association suddenly become less prone to riots?
Nor do they look at the composition of a modern council estate. Especially in London, where most of their analysis is done, ‘council estates’ are not mono-tenure anymore, they are broken up with a large number of flats sold and now occupied by home owners, a burgeoning number of private tenants, temporary accommodation and, in some places, large numbers of students.  Most housing managers will say that a disproportionate number of the problems they have to deal with arise from the more transient residents who are not secure tenants or established lessees.  All of these points should be considered before generalisations are thrown about.
The Guardian’s analysis shows clearly enough that ‘deprivation was certainly the
unifying factor’.  They quote Alex Singleton at Liverpool University (one of those who analysed the data):  “These limited data and analysis seem to suggest that those people who have been appearing on riot-related charges (typically young males) live in some of the most deprived areas of our largest cities, and in neighbourhoods where the conditions are getting worse rather than better. Rioting is deplorable, however, if events such as this are to be mitigated in the future, the prevailing conditions and constraints effecting people living in areas must form part of the discussion. A “broken society” happens somewhere, and geography matters.”
Now I don’t disagree with that.  But the Guardian then moves the point along with some case stories, particularly about Pembury in Hackney.  Now, Pembury is not a council
estate, but from some reports it sounds like world war 3 broke out there.  The Times says the average family income on Pembury is £9,000 compared to £46,000 in neighbouring mortgaged street properties, so it is a prime candidate.  But there has been a lot of dispute about what actually happened there, most notably by the Chief Executive of the Peabody Trust that runs it.  Many people have complained about the mischaracterisation
of their areas in the media.
A mapping exercise done at University College London (my old Geog Dept I assume) discovered that in north London 84% of verified incidents occurred within a five minute walk of both an established town centre and a large post-war housing estate.  Now there’s a shock, I’m not sure there are many parts of Hackney and Tottenham where this doesn’t apply.  In south London it was 96%.  UCL identify a slightly different factor: built form rather than tenure: “it’s not an argument that social housing is connected with crime, but that a certain type of post-war large housing estate is.” 
So does it matter if it isn’t clear if we’re talking about people or places, and which tenure they’re in?  Well I think it does.  Iain Duncan Smith is a highly political man who arrives at highly political conclusions.  His think tank friends want to create the opinion within the public that not only is there a link between living in council housing, sloth, and criminality but there is a causal correlation (ie the tenure causes these defects).  Then they can promote free market solutions and argue that collective provision should be removed.  We are experiencing a skirmish in their propaganda war.

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What goes up won’t come down

The changes to Local Housing Allowance and the rest of the Housing Benefit system have been covered frequently on Red Brick.  We don’t think much of them.
But one argument that the government deployed seemed logical to a lot of people.  That was the common Ministerial assertion that, because LHA claimants make up as much as 40% of the private rented market, the level of LHA  payments must be a big factor in the rise in private rents over recent years.  And the corollary was that cuts to benefit, and hence to tenants’ ability to pay, would inevitably lead to a fall in rents, which would be a good outcome.
In my old economics textbook I find some support for this in theory: if supply is constant and effective demand falls, then the price should fall as well.  Cue much Tory-speak about the good old market mechanism.
However in the real housing market demand is in such excess over supply that the neat little supply and demand chart really doesn’t work.  If you reduce benefits so that tenants in high demand relatively expensive areas have to move out, there are many people willing to replace them at the same price.  The price will not fall.  Yet in the cheaper areas where the tenants are expected to move to, there will be more people chasing the small proportion of homes that become available at or below the 30% percentile (the new cap) at
any one time: the price is likely to rise.
A new report ‘Leading the Market’ from the Chartered Institute of Housing and the British Property Federation pours more cold water on the ‘LHA causes high rents’ argument.
They conclude that

“The increase in average rent levels during this period (2008-2010) is entirely due to a shift in the relative distribution of the caseload from the North and the Midlands towards London and Southern England. After adjusting for this ‘caseload effect’ average housing benefit rent levels fell by 1% (instead of the reported 3% rise).”
“We found no evidence for a relationship between the LHA inflation rates and the proportion of the market that is let to housing benefit tenants.”
“There is no evidence to support the contention that the LHA is inflationary or produces a feedback loop.”
“Our findings call into question the Government’s strategy that it can use its power as a bulk purchaser to force landlords to reduce their rents.  If LHA rates do not contribute towards rent inflation then conversely they cannot be used as a tool to force rents down.”

In short the policy is not just wrong in principle: it is wrong in theory and it is wrong in practice.

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Housing will define the London Mayoral election

Housing was one of Ken Livingstone’s success stories. Despite starting with very few housing powers and responsibilities, Livingstone skilfully used his planning powers and his leadership to promote housebuilding, especially on the major sites in the east of the capital, and to raise the proportion of homes built that are affordable.
Policies such as the target that 50 per cent of all homes built should be affordable; development should wherever possible be mixed tenure; there should be a larger share of family-sized homes – were allied to growing influence over central government’s housing capital expenditure leading to London’s biggest ever affordable housing budget.
Although the recession had a serious impact on private sector output, by 2008, when Boris Johnson took over, the prospects for housing in London were better than they had been for a generation.
Johnson’s policies, like those of the government, are highly ideological and damaging. There will be virtually no new social rented housing and the existing social rented stock will be reduced.
What little money is left after 60% cuts will be channelled into the so-called ‘Affordable Rent’ programme at rents of up to 80% of market rents. Johnson’s revised London Plan removes many of the policies that were most effective.
There has been no mitigation of the “Kosovo-style social cleansing” – to use Johnson’s own words – that will result from their housing benefit policies and the total benefit cap.
The prospect is that, were he to win, a new Livingstone mayoralty will spend three of its four years under the coalition, so the approach will have to be a mix of pragmatic policy and campaigning.
There are things the new Mayor can do to relieve the situation and champion London’s interests. A detailed report from the newly-formed London Labour Housing Group sets out what they might be.
For example:
• Limited funds can be identified to start a programme of social rented housing again, especially using public land;
• The 50% affordable rule – supported by the inspectors who assessed Johnson’s new plan – could be re-introduced;
• More pro-active planning with an emphasis on mixed communities and not
ghettoisation would challenge developers;
• A London-wide empty homes strategy could bring thousands of homes back into use;
• A new charter for private renting could engage tenants and landlords in a serious attempt to professionalise the sector and improve standards;
• The Mayor can push financial institutions into better mortgage policies for first time buyers and mortgage deposit guarantee schemes that could make a big difference for a lot of people;
• A new monitoring unit could track households being forced by the housing benefit changes to move across London, using the information to make sure poor and vulnerable people do not lose contact with essential services, social services support, schooling, and so on;
• A much bigger emphasis on co-operative and mutual solutions to housing needs, including Community Land Trusts.
Another vital role for a new Labour Mayor, were he to win, will be to prepare for a new Labour government in 2015, were Ed Miliband to be elected prime minister.
Livingstone has good relationships with Miliband and Ed Balls and a lot of preparatory work could go in to a new housing programme which should be at the centre of Labour’s economic, health and community re-building agendas as well as housing.
He should champion London’s interests through high-profile campaigning for a better housing deal – more genuinely affordable homes, less draconian benefit policies, mixed communities throughout London, the idea of a London Living Rent to match the London Living Wage.
There are a lot of ideas around at present for Livingstone to build on for the campaign to beat Johnson – from the Green party’s Jenny Jones AM, the Pro-Housing Alliance, the London Assembly Housing and Planning Committee, and now London Labour Housing Group have all produced serious proposals that deserve to be taken up.
Livingstone’s housing record was a good one; Johnson’s is dreadful. The task for progressives is to convince Londoners they can vote for a better way next May.
This post has also been published on Left Foot Forward.
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Power in planning goes to the powerful

The letters page in the Daily telegraph is not a place I go often. But in the last week or two, since the paper launched its ‘Hands off our land’ campaign, the correspondents have reflected the mood of insurrection in the shires.
The Government’s draft National Planning Policy Framework is the cause of the deep rift in the Conservative Party.  Two great Tory traditions have collided – conservation of the countryside versus making lots of money from development.
The government has dug this deep hole for itself and Pickles/Shapps/Clark and co deserve no sympathy for their plight.  When they came to power they made constant attacks on Labour’s national targets, its regional planning approach and regional plans, which in my view had quite carefully balanced the need to build homes with the need to protect heritage and beautiful places.
At that time the Tory talk reflected the extreme version of localism, where local people would dictate what would get built and where, with just a few incentives, like the New Homes Bonus, to encourage them to build.  It felt like a nimby charter and that the net result would be very little development.  Indeed, some councils reduced their development targets massively and a few declared what was a virtual moratorium on new homes, especially new affordable homes.
It’s not clear when the penny dropped and the government realised that its approach was incompatible with building more homes.  This realisation was encouraged by some developers who increasingly, according to the Telegraph and others, fill the Tory Party’s coffers with rather more than pennies.  Anyway, they now seem to have swung right round to the opposite extreme.  There are accusations that government inspectors are ‘pressurising’ district councils into changing their core strategies to get more homes built.  The Telegraph says that they have ‘identified a number of rural councils which have been instructed to make changes to their core strategies by planning inspectors that will see them giving up countryside for development. The rulings have created deep tensions at some key Tory run councils with many councillors feeling frustrated at the centralised
interference.’
For the anti-development lobby, the NPPF is wholly unacceptable because it says that planning must not act as an impediment to growth (i.e. development) and that there will be a presumption in favour of ‘sustainable’ development.  Those that genuinely believed in localism, and thought this government would be the conservationists’ friend, feel betrayed and outraged at this new centralised imposition.
Although there is little doubt that the planning system could be streamlined and some of the fussier rules removed, Labour’s structure for planning is beginning to look like a well-oiled machine: national assessments of how many homes are needed, some strict central policy guidance like the target for building on brownfield land and protecting the green belt, a regional assessment of land capacity and the setting of targets for each area,
balanced by local influence over sites and specific developments.
The excellent Highbury Group on housing delivery has submitted comments on the government’s plans which seem to be the height of common sense.  They argue that the planning system needs to be plan-led and not led by desires of developers or even the general needs of the economy.  Plans need to be evidence-based, taking full account of demography, geography and the natural resources available.  They point out that sustainability is a subjective consideration and not a market phenomenon, and should be contextualised by the preparation of a proper hierarchy of national, regional and local plans.
Most studies of the capacity of areas to support housebuilding find more developable brownfield land than was previously believed, although that land is often harder to assemble into good prepared sites than the greenfield option.   Some greenfield (NB not Green Belt) land will be required but not so much that it will concrete over the countryside – far from it.  With imagination and determination, the development planning process can deliver the homes we need without ruining the countryside and the natural heritage.
The truth is that Labour was right all along, or at least a lot less wrong than the Tories, and the Party should be taking this opportunity to say so to the 3.8m members of the National Trust, the 1m members of the RSPB, and the 600,000 members of the Woodland Trust.
As the National Trust says: ‘We believe strongly that any development must meet the needs of people, the environment as well as the economy.  The Government has failed to do this in its reforms. It has put short term financial gain ahead of everything else. It has failed to protect the everyday places that communities love. Power in planning goes to the powerful.’  Spot on.