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Community power: empowering councils and building more housing

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. 

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">John Myers</span></strong>
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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Progressive planning changes are needed not whole-scale reform

The anticipated planning reforms will be the biggest changes to the planning system seen for some time – a complete overhaul. Planning isn’t perfect, but nor is it beyond repair. If government are serious about housing delivery, they’d be talking about sensible improvements not whole-scale reforms. Instead they seem intent on riding roughshod over local people and all too willing to put private profit ahead of what our neighbourhoods actually need. So if it were up to me, what would I be doing? There’s plenty to do, but these are three things I’d start with.

Firstly, the housing delivery test. A small but technical change could really push developers sitting on land with permission to actually focus on delivery. The Local Government Association estimate that nearly 9 out 10 applications are approved and in the last decade alone nearly a million homes have not been built despite permissions being granted. The Housing Delivery Test measures the number homes delivered against the number of homes required. Where delivery of housing has fallen below the housing requirement, councils can be penalised.  

The main issue is the fact that Councils, unless they are their own schemes, do not deliver planning permissions – they are totally reliant on the market/ developers/ registered providers.  Developers may seek to restrict delivery in order to maintain profit levels; landowners may gain permission and land bank rather than actually deliver; and registered providers are also heavily dependent on state funding streams.  Crucially, events such as cyclical changes to the economy, and currently Covid-19, can significantly affect delivery which councils have no control over.

So a solution? Give local authorities the power to rescind permissions or more radical still take the build over themselves, if possible using better compulsory purchase orders if development does not begin within a year. Not a huge change but certainly could stop land-banking and start delivering housing and infrastructure.

Secondly, permitted development (PD). It has morphed into a policy that will cause more harm to a locality than actually result in good quality homes and a Government report has concluded the same. Aside from the fact there have been numerous cases of horrendous office to residential conversions and no obligations to affordable housing, PD has resulted in the displacement of valuable business and employment in many areas because the residential return far exceeds the commercial. The new permitted development rights could actually see high streets decline even further. Something that goes against what the Government are seeking to do.

I am not suggesting residential conversions can’t take place in high streets but it needs to be in a planned process that takes in to account the local economy and secures quality and space standards. In Brent we have introduced an Article 4 direction in growth areas to stop office to residential conversions and are now seeking to expand that for the whole borough. My solution would be to give councils the ability to opt in to PD with guaranteed quality of housing, rather than a blanket nationwide policy. It needs to be locally led and part of a solution to address local housing, infrastructure and economic needs.  

Thirdly, public sector land should be developed in partnership with local councils not developers. Currently, many public sector bodies have housing targets and often go to developers to deliver those numbers. This results in public sector land being sold, as well as not delivering 100% affordable housing due to ‘unviable’ financial viability assessments.

A simple solution is to legislate that public sector organisations give councils first right of refusal on land to deliver housing or enter in some sort of partnership. Councils can borrow again to build housing and combined with grants, schemes can be delivered with higher numbers of affordable and social homes on all public sector land.

Essentially, these solutions are small but significant and are certainly not only thing we need to do. Fix what is currently not working in the system, give councils the freedoms and powers to maximise affordability, infrastructure and support for local economies. Covid has changed so much and it now time to take decisive action to support councils properly in housing and infrastructure delivery. It is now time to enable councils to lead the housing market, not be hampered by it. 

<strong><span class="has-inline-color has-accent-color">Shama Tatler</span></strong>
Shama Tatler

Councillor Shama Tatler is the Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Property and Planning at the London Borough of Brent. She was elected to represent the Labour Party in Fryent Ward in May 2014 and has been a Cabinet Member since Dec 2016.
 
She is running for the Labour Party NEC and her reasons for running can be found here. Shama also sits on the LGA City Regions Board and the West London Economic Prosperity Board.

Visit her website below: http://www.shamatatler.com/