Last week, Labour threw down the gauntlet to the “bureaucrats and the blockers” who they see as standing in the way of their target of 1.5 million new homes over the next five years.
Taking on the blockers
Writing in the Times last week, the Prime Minister promised to “usher in a golden era of building”. In his article, Keir Starmer stated that the “country has been held to ransom by the blockers and bureaucrats who have stopped the country building, choked off growth and driven prices through the roof.”
On Sunday, Angela Rayner braved the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg Show to further set out the government’s plans to fast-track housing applications where schemes are aligned with the NPPF and relevant Local Plans.
The development benefits of this approach are already being felt outside of the Westminster bubble.
On the same day as the Prime Minister’s article, Berkeley Group stated that the property market is “on its way back up”, and Angela Rayner approved Marks & Spencer’s controversial plans to demolish their Oxford Street store and redevelop it into a new ten-storey building complete with office, gym, cafes and retail space.
The settlement train is leaving…
The government clearly believes that it was elected to deliver growth and has now given councils, central government civil servants, and even some sections of the general public notice that they need to get in line and support growth.
Civil servants and environmental policy experts have come under direct instruction to help housebuilders build, and avoid what he called “managed decline” by streamlining regulations for new developments.
Local councils labelling plans to deliver 1.5 million homes over the next five years as “unrealistic” and “impossible to achieve” have already earned a rebuke from Angela Rayner MP, who effectively told local councils that they have no choice but to comply with the government’s proposals.
In the words of Tony Blair, “the settlement train is leaving…”
The political threat to Labour
Keeping in mind the arguments around use of the Green Belt, the flagship policy of 1.5 million homes will be a key issue for years to come. In fact, Labour’s election campaigns at local, regional, devolved and national levels for the next 5-7 years will all now focus around the delivery of these key missions.
With public opinion (broadly) on their side when it comes to housebuilding, where will the threats come from, politically?
Well, it may come from inside the Labour Party.
Before the election, Labour made a conscious decision to concentrate on urban voters, especially renters, and so some within the Party will have been expecting and planning for an argument with the countryside.
Post-election, however, Labour now finds itself with a good proportion of rural seats and councils and many new Labour MPs and councillors in these areas are now concerned with keeping their seats.
Labour MP Markus Campbell-Savours, who won the newly created seat of Penrith & Solway at the election, has already criticised the government’s plans on inheritance tax, claiming that the policy goes against the Party’s promises at the last election. His concerns are unlikely to exist in a vacuum, and Keir Starmer will have to work hard to keep his promises on growth without breaking apart the Labour Party’s new coalition.