The housing shortage is not simply a matter of bullying councils and communities into accepting new homes - Jayne Dowle

The government is galvanising its manifesto pledge to build hundreds of thousands of new homes in England every year, but their plans are raising heckles before a spade even hits the ground.

Experts warn Labour’s ambitious housing targets fail to take into account land shortages, strains on local infrastructure such as roads, schools, nurseries and GP surgeries, plus a lack of capacity in the planning system and construction industry.

One of the biggest concerns is building on green belt land, and potentially a new category of ‘grey belt’, land which the government has previously described as "poor quality and ugly areas” that can be built on.

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Let’s put that particular argument to one side for a moment and consider this: there are just under 700,000 empty and unfurnished homes in England, according to recent government figures. This is almost half of the 1.5m total new homes Keir Starmer wants to push through in the next five years.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during a visit to a housing development. PIC: Joe Giddens/PA WireLabour leader Sir Keir Starmer during a visit to a housing development. PIC: Joe Giddens/PA Wire
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer during a visit to a housing development. PIC: Joe Giddens/PA Wire

Bringing vacant properties back to life is not easy. Even finding the owners – who may be reluctant to take responsibility or be prepared to sell – is an arduous task for local councils. But this startling figure reminds us that solving ‘the housing shortage’ is not simply a matter of bullying councils and communities into accepting new homes.

A thoughtful government, especially one that pleads poverty, would look first at the resources available; would it not have made sense to launch a concerted effort to bring as many empty homes as possible back into use before building new?

If Starmer and his deputy, housing secretary Angela Rayner, want to don their hard hats and work boots and throw their weight around, they should start with all those homes where no-one lives.

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Most of these, incidentally, will already stand in established communities, so no need for new infrastructure, building on green belt (or grey belt), expanding into flood plains, adding to carbon footprints and all the other challenges this drive to build new will bring.

Starmer and Rayner, who have given councils a three-month deadline for coming up with new local plans to accommodate quotas of housing, or face Whitehall making their decisions for them, are using a massive blunt instrument to crack a very complex nut.

"The starting point is local plans, and that's really important for councils to develop the plan according to the target, taking into account local need, and working with developers,” Starmer says. “So that's where it starts.”

Presumably the Prime Minister accepts that this will put his government on a collision course with local authorities and metro mayors, who will not take kindly to having their powers usurped. What is the point of devolution, if such matters cannot be devolved?

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And does Starmer really think that the £46m pledged in the Budget to hire 300 graduates and apprentices for council planning teams will free up planning deadlock overnight? That’s less than one body each for the 317 local authorities in England.

The starting point, actually, should be people. The government says it wants to focus development on areas of the country – including North Yorkshire – where housing is especially unaffordable.

This is easy to say, but considering the market economics of property, very difficult to control. It’s early days, with the update to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) only announced last week, but so far nothing has been said about the types of housing that will be built, or any range of tenures, or indeed the mechanics of actual affordability.

Millions of people live in unsuitable private rentals, and according to the government, 1.3 m households are on social housing waiting lists, with a record number – including 160,000 children – in temporary accommodation.

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It is highly arguable that a good number of these households will be unable to afford to buy a new home either for cash or a mortgage; no means of raising a deposit, low wages/reliance on benefits, unstable work or relationships.

It’s a massive gamble on the government’s part to assume that more homes for sale means house prices will fall, especially in areas of high demand. It’s also a huge trust exercise with profit-driven developers, who will always sell for the highest price they can achieve. Perhaps Starmer doesn’t imagine this ever happening in his socialist utopia; he’s naïve if so.

With this three-month deadline looming, who is working collaboratively with developers to ensure that a significant proportion of these new homes will be social housing, or available by relatively affordable means, such as shared ownership?

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