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Our failure to plan for rural housing development

Rural housing is one of the most pressing, and contentious, issues facing this country. If Labour is to stage a rural revival then we must confront this issue head on.

In my home constituency of North East Somerset, and across rural England, there is a great distrust around the idea of house building. It is common for people to feel that residents have little to no say over when and where new housing is built and that housing developers are unaccountable. These concerns are not misplaced. For too long we have seen housing developments simply bolted on to towns and villages with little to no thought about the impact these new developments have.

When housing developments are built without infrastructure such as shops, restaurants and healthcare facilities it puts pressure on the existing infrastructure in a town, particularly road infrastructure. Most towns and villages in North East Somerset are simply not equipped to deal with increases in traffic, often due to road size and layout.

When infrastructure is already crumbling under 11 years of Tory misrule these strains can be devastating. But this lack of infrastructure is equally damaging to new residents, a lack of shopping or healthcare provision nearby harms the ability to forge a community spirit in new developments. The Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated clearly the dangers of isolation and it is incumbent on the Labour Party that our housing strategy acknowledges this.

As a consequence of austerity, rural communities have seen much of their infrastructure disappear. With police stations, fire stations and GP’s being closed in small towns and villages and often converted in to flats. This has increased the distrust around housing developments for many people. But it also contributes to the poor conditions of new housing: as a parish councillor who sits on the planning committee I have seen many examples where buildings are converted in to flats or flats are built.

Often, these flats do not have an appropriate number of parking spaces, which further contributes to the weakening of road infrastructure. If you live in a small town with roads designed in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, and there are cars parked on the road due to a lack of parking spaces, it can become very difficult to drive around.

We must also face up to the climate crisis. It is not possible, or desirable, to continually build on every field in perpetuity given the environmental consequences. Our green spaces must be protected, not just for the environmental benefit – and biodiversity benefits they provide, but for the mental health benefits the existence of these spaces provide for the people who live near them.

When we do build it must be with a with a long term plan in mind, rather than for the short term financial interests of housing developers. This means, building homes that can last for 100 years – and – envisioning what the community will look like at that point too, including its green spaces. A climate combating housing strategy must also include retrofitting old houses, as we’ve seen championed by our Labour Metro Mayor Dan Norris.

Despite this, there is a need for more housing in North East Somerset. In the towns and villages of my constituency there has long been a strong community spirit. However many people are concerned that children and young people are unable to afford housing in the communities they grew up in – and are forced to move to Bristol and Bath (further contributing to the housing issues faced in those cities) – never to return.

The only way to combat this loss of community, is of course to build more housing in these areas. But this house building must be accompanied by a strategy to assist people in renting and buying their own houses at a reasonable rate. Otherwise for many people the dream of living in the town they grew up in is unreachable.

I believe firmly that there is public support for building the houses we need to combat the crisis we face. But I also believe that more work needs to be done to gain the full confidence of people that under Labour housing will be a benefit to everyone.

Jonathan Wallcroft

Jonathan Wallcroft is a parish councillor in North East Somerset as well as the Secretary of the South West Branch of the Labour Housing Group and a steering group member of Labour Coast & Country.

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Councils are often unfairly criticised. They have many difficult responsibilities, and they are hamstrung by Treasury rules on financing. The Treasury often sees tax revenues as its own money, when nearly every penny was generated, in one way or another, from activities by citizens within the area of a particular local authority.

That local authority must maintain the roads, deal with the schools, provide social care, and furnish a range of local services – not forgetting, of course, the bins. Voters wouldn’t let the council forget the bins, even if it wanted to.

New Local’s new report highlights many successes where giving local communities more power and resources led to better outcomes for their citizens. We make the case for a community-powered approach to housing and planning, rather than one imposed from above by national government.

There are plenty of real-world examples where councils and communities working together generated far better outcomes than would otherwise be possible. In Halton, near Lancaster, a community built 41 homes for themselves as co-housing, all at Passivhaus standards to help get to net zero. Housing cooperatives like that are a stunning 18% of all apartments in Zurich, Switzerland.

In Switzerland local governments have far more autonomy. When a council approves more housing, it reaps the tax benefits. That makes locals far more supportive. Similarly, when a German town hosts a factory, it may see huge benefits from those profits.

In this country, councils have far less power. Trapped between strict limits on revenues and ever higher expectations for delivery, many councillors and officials are deeply frustrated. Their residents want a decent place to live, with good schools for their children and good care for those who need it. Too often, councils find themselves tied in knots by Treasury rules that only an accountant could love.

We argue that this country has not yet learned the lessons of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom. She showed how, given the power and the resources to do so, communities can often achieve much more than the central government. We have recently seen the backlash against top-down methods like permitted development. Allowing more bottom-up processes to add housing could be a much more popular way forward.

When elected members take political flak to allocate appropriate sites for housing, they are disheartened if those sites sit unused for years. They have little power to ensure faster build out. Our report argues that councils should be able to levy an annual tax on the value of allocated but undeveloped portions of large sites, up to half a percent of value a year. That would help to mitigate the damage caused to the surroundings by blank hoardings and derelict sites, apparently abandoned. It would also give locals, who might be frustrated that builders ask for more sites without using the ones they have already secured, more faith in the certainty and control in the planning system.

We also propose methods for councils to let communities take the lead on urban infill to use waste land, where appropriate and subject to strict rules to protect others and the environment. In addition to the ‘street votes’ idea to allow each street to set its own design rules to add more housing, endorsed recently by a number of housing associations and housing campaigners, we point to the wasted backlands sites in some 20th-century developments: derelict former garages that are now too small for today’s cars, served by dead alleys that have become little more than refuges for drug dealers or convenient access routes for burglars.

We suggest that, where the surrounding residents agree, they should be allowed to take the lead on setting out what additional housing can be added, for example by replacing those derelict garages with affordable housing for members of the community. Those new homes will increase housing density and help to make better public transport more viable, which will help to reduce carbon emissions and enable healthier, active travel.

The Treasury has failed to ensure that local government here, like local government in most other countries, has powers to provide, improve, and reap the benefits. In fact, the Treasury has deliberately gone in the other direction. By some measures, we have the most centralised governance in the OECD. We also have among the least affordable housing. That is not a coincidence. It is partly cause and effect.

There are many brilliant council officers and members across the country doing their level best for their communities. If we can give them the power to enable the right decisions and to capture the benefits for their communities, we can create more affordable housing, fairer opportunities and help the environment too.

Housing Beyond Markets and State can be downloaded here.

John Myers

John Myers is a housing campaigner with YIMBY Alliance, which campaigns for more housing and better places with the support of local communities.

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