It is a truism that Britain needs more houses. As the population has grown, average household sizes have fallen—from four before the Second World War to 2.4 today, the result of greater longevity, more single parents and more independent lifestyles. Much of our housing stock is in the “wrong” place—too many people want to live in big cities, too few in the terraces of “red wall” towns. And not every property built in the last 100 years is suited to modern living. Nobody serious disputes any of this, yet the government’s recent proposals to overhaul planning laws, supposedly with these problems in mind, have turned to dust. After they were blamed for the Tories’ shock summer loss in the Chesham & Amersham by-election, both housing secretary Robert Jenrick and the reforms were dropped.
When the Tories regained power in 1951, by contrast, Harold Macmillan was made housing minister and tasked with building 300,000 houses annually—and he achieved it. This helped him become prime minister in 1957. Until the 1980s, 300,000 remained the average annual figure. In the years since, new construction has been around half that figure. The results are well known—rising house prices and dwindling owner-occupation.
The central explanation is that local authorities, once the main driver of new housebuilding, are now the main obstacle to it. When Macmillan fulfilled his target, almost two-thirds of the total consisted of new council houses. In the 1980s, the Thatcher government more or less put a stop to new local authority building. The hope was that the gap would be filled by housing associations and the private sector. But that didn’t happen. There were just fewer new houses.
It is probably not a coincidence that the 1980s was also the decade when the acronym “nimby” (not in my back yard) was imported from the US. The sentiment is a natural result of a decline in social solidarity associated with the owner-occupation peak. Local authorities, their powers steadily eroded by the centralisation of the British state, had less power to improve their communities and were under pressure to just say no.
Today we have a “tyranny of the minority.” When most people are not much interested in democratic participation—and have little reason to be—small groups who feel strongly about something, perhaps from self-interest, perhaps from genuine intellectual conviction, can exert disproportionate influence. Corporate lobbying has too large an effect. And nimbys can be decisive in local elections.
We need either more centralisation on this issue or less. The government could, as its recent plans envisaged, impose quotas on local authorities. More imaginatively, a recent Centre for Cities report proposed that Great British Railways (sic) could be given plenipotentiary power to develop land around commuter stations.
But less central dictation is better. As with social care, the root of the problem is the long-term emasculation of local government. Some people want the solitude of remote country, mountains and lakes, and there is plenty of Britain where they can find it—and work from home via broadband. But more prefer the amenities and connections of the cities, which is why we see pressure on urban rents and house prices in the first place. Imagine if local authority leaders were empowered and incentivised to grow their communities. Actually implementing the plan to allow full retention of business rates would be a start, and might be supplemented by allowing town halls a greater share of the great gains in land value that follow planning being granted.
There was a time when councils had powers and incentives; some of our new metro mayors are champing at the bit. Let’s free them to go forward.
