Governments generally use Christmas and the New Year to bury bad news, hoping no-one will notice while they’re distracted by paper hats, mince pies and brandy butter. But this year Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook decided to ring the changes by swapping the traditional Scrooge costume for announcing glad tidings of comfort and joy instead.
The cause of all this unexpected seasonal cheer was a list of housing reforms which a cross-party coalition of MPs, pressure groups and local Councils have been suggesting for years, and which ought to increase the number of new homes the UK builds each year.
The changes aren’t rocket science. They’re simple, practical reforms like permitting lots more new homes within walking distance of train stations, or adding more buildings to existing plots. It’s called ‘gentle density’ in Westminster jargon and, crucially, it should work.
But hold on. We’ve all got so used to the pathetically slow trickle of new homes which the UK has built for decades that we shouldn’t get giddy about an increase that’s undoubtedly welcome, but needs to be larger still. Housing experts say we’re short of 6.5 million homes and so, like the well-meant but ill-fitting Christmas jumper from a distant aunt, it’s time to take Minister Pennycook’s gift back to the shop and exchange it for a larger size.
The bigger version of these reforms would give property owners in towns and cities the legal right to ‘Build Up, Not Out’. They’d be able to extend their properties up to four or five stories tall (the equivalent of a Georgian townhouse, or tree-height) without planning permission, providing they follow the local Council’s Design Code so the new homes match the style of the best existing local buildings in the area, and comply with building safety regulations and heritage protections in the usual way.
By gently increasing the density of British towns and cities to catch up with good-looking continental neighbours like Paris or Athens, we would turn today’s trickle of new homes into a roaring torrent, nearly doubling the amount of approved space for homes at a stroke. It would be the biggest single creation of new living space for generations, and the biggest single act of wealth creation too as most urban properties would suddenly get new ‘hope value’ which they didn’t have before.
As all the newly-approved homes are built they will steadily reduce housing costs to rent or buy, making home ownership affordable for people under 30 for the first time in decades. Rents will become more affordable, and taxpayers will do better as the need for housing benefits declines as well.
Even better, our towns and cityscapes will get their beautiful, distinctive local characters back, because local Design Codes stop ‘anywhere-ville’ estates of identical houses and match the best of what’s already there instead. It will regenerate run-down town and city centres with new investment, making them ‘alive after five’. And the new regime will be lots greener too, cutting commuting because people will be able to live closer to work, stopping urban sprawl by slashing pressure from builders to concrete over green fields and green belts at the edge of towns and cities, and using carbon-intensive infrastructure like water pipes, power grids and roads more efficiently too.
These reforms will mean Government won’t need centrally-imposed housebuilding targets to force local Councils to accept unwanted developments anymore. And small local builders will be able to become developers once more, because all the planning delays, complexity, expense, uncertainty and risks which only big firms can cope with will be gone.
These changes would deliver lots more beautiful, affordable, green homes in better-looking towns and cities. And if we don’t tell auntie that we had to take her Christmas gift back to the shops and swap it for a bigger one, I bet she’ll never know.
This article is the latest in a fortnightly series of policy proposals published in CapX from John Penrose and the Centre for Small State Conservatives.
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