Your editorial (16 February) correctly identifies the business model of private housing developers as the large hole at the centre of Labour’s ambitious plan to build 1.5m new homes by the end of this parliament. In recent years, most large developers have been doing very well in terms of profit margins and shareholder returns without having to increase their output at all. Why should they bother to do more?
The only way the government will get close to its target is by stumping up the money for investment in new social homes, exerting stronger control over increasing land values along the way. It was a lesson learned nearly 80 years ago by Aneurin Bevan. In his stint as housing minister, the postwar Labour government built more than 160,000 council homes a year – in the teeth of acute austerity.
Four-fifths of all new houses built in the period were council homes, as speculative building was restrained. Bevan expressed his view with characteristic clarity: “If we are to plan, we have to plan with plannable instruments, and the speculative builder, by his very nature, is not a plannable instrument.” It’s a lesson that should be heeded once more.
Prof Ian Cole
Sheffield
The mid-20th-century new towns set an excellent model for those of the mid-21st (Work on up to 12 new towns in England to begin by next election, says government, 12 February). The state gave overall planning permission for a designated area and master plan. Within that area, detailed planning was controlled by each new town board (which included local councillors), so was decided quickly. The board bought the land at agricultural land prices so that its development value (publicly created by the planning permission) was returned to the community in the form of infrastructure, services, schools, open space etc.
But, for the 21st century, it’s essential that sustainability is inbuilt, with master plans based on walking, cycling and public transport (rather than the car-based models of the 1960s), and with the highest standards of structure, insulation and heating for homes, commercial and public buildings.
Moira Hankinson
Landscape architect, Peterborough and Washington new towns
There is much that is positive in the refining of proposals for building 1.5m new homes and 12 new towns as highlighted in your article (Work on 12 new towns in England to begin by next election says government, 12 February). However, where the detail remains perilously scant is in delivery. The new town taskforce interim report barely goes there either.
There is a risk that the easy option is taken: of location and site selection, compulsory purchase, volume housebuilders – who already build over 70% of new homes annually – competing for the spoils, with poor master-planning and second-rate home design resulting in yet more soulless monoculture, inadequate infrastructure and poor transport links. This has happened countless times over the decades, particularly as our towns and cities expand.
We must really work harder in being creative over what we deliver and how – places where people want to live and work and enjoy their leisure time. Places where people come first. That demands thought and investment, and there are some very good examples, like Nansledan, or Woodstock, or Tornagrain, where the landowner commits to retaining a long-term interest rather than offloading land purely for short-term gain. This “legacy approach” requires changes to current tax rules to create a level playing field, new ways to cashflow the upfront infrastructure costs, and more dogmatic requirements for single-interest groups to work together to secure planning more quickly. We must also strengthen and diversify the supply chain by encouraging small and medium-sized developers back into the market.
Hugh Petter
Director, ADAM Architecture, Winchester
Article by:Source: Guardian Staff
