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1/ The govt's planning reforms are doomed. They're already crap, and they're probably going to get worse. And they've been done so naively that what the govt is doing now is probably going to set back the cause of housing reform by another ten years. Thread:
2/ The govt started with 3 main ideas: 1. Green belt reform 2. Higher housing targets, based on local prices and a new algorithm 3. Zoning for land to give advance permission for new developments. Two of these are gone. The third is neutered already and is likely to get worse.pic.twitter.com/AjUNtXDIhT
3/ Green belt reform and the housing targets algorithm are both dead. This was inevitable from the start: you might not like NIMBYs, but they vote & there are lots of them. Even MPs who are normally pro-development & pro-reform opposed these proposals. They were DOA.pic.twitter.com/38dSKKUh6n
4/ It's worth noting just how naive these were. We all know the green belt is sacred (most people think it's about protecting nature and beauty, rather than industrial farmland). The algorithm meant forcing homes on Tory constituencies that infuriated Conservative voters.
5/ I have no idea why anyone thought these were smart things to push on. Tory MPs will not vote for a housing bill that makes their constituents hate them. Asking them to is *begging* for a rebellion. But that's exactly what the bill originally tried to do.pic.twitter.com/N6XsWxQAtY
6/ So, inevitably, there was a backlash. Then, the govt shifted to moving the additional housing targets to London. Much better, politically – Londoners mostly don't vote Tory, so there's less of a backbench rebel risk, and that's where the highest demand for housing is anyway.
7/ BUT – then it approved Sadiq Khan's London plan, which has much lower target numbers, so the supposed increase in targets for London won't bite for at least five years. By then they might have been repealed again – just as higher targets were (by the Tories!) in 2010.pic.twitter.com/11dJSIQhS5
8/ So what's left? There are two basic ideas behind the Planning Bill as it stands. First, when councils designate a site for housing in their local plan, it wants to make it clear what can be built there, to avoid costly wrangling about that later.
9/ Second, give the developer certainty that they can build there. This would avoid the huge sums of money that get wasted on QCs and consultants as local NIMBY groups try to relitigate whether you can build at all, and to reduce the size and density of the developments.
10/ These could reduce costs and make some marginal sites viable, but don't do anything to push councils to designate more sites for homes. Most councils just aim to allocate enough sites to meet their housing targets and they now have no reason to allocate more.
11/ Now some of the rebels who got the first lot of stuff scrapped (eg Villiers and May) have joined the CPRE against it, there's a big & growing risk that the Bill doesn't even manage to provide extra certainty, because the rebels will get the right of locals to object kept in.pic.twitter.com/Jt7SpT2ILT
12/ Even if not, just providing certainty doesn't fix things. There are plenty of places in the US and Europe where you know exactly what you can build, but you still get far less development than is needed. Clear zoning ≠ *permissive* zoning.https://sambowman.substack.com/p/its-the-supply-stupid …
13/ The current proposals may create only "Growth" and "Protected" areas, so a lot of stuff that isn't "Growth" get stuck in with conservation areas in the "Protected" category. That'd make it even harder to build on many brownfield sites, & mean we get LESS housing than now.
14/ And even if the Government includes Renewal areas as a middle ground between Growth and Protected, as it's considering, there's still no carrot + stick for councils to allow more housing. They have totally forgotten about incentives. They're trying to make water flow uphill.
15/ So we get a bill that's already a shadow of what was originally proposed, with the original proposals that would have made a difference cut out – as the politics made inevitable – and what's left doing nothing, or making things worse, if they're not blocked by rebels anyway.
16/ Govts are constantly doing reforms that do nothing to get more housing – or do, until the Minister gets fired and it all gets axed. eg, Nicholas Ridley rammed through developments against local wishes. Then he got fired, and his successor Chris Patten immediately stopped.
17/ What this govt is doing repeats all the old mistakes. It comes from a failure to understand that NIMBYs are *extremely* powerful. You cannot beat them head on. Planning to "smash" them is like the Polish army gearing its cavalry up to "smash" the Wehrmacht in 1939.
18/ I hope I'm wrong. I think meaningful housing reform is the "magic bullet" that would give us a decade-long economic boom, boost the birth rate, raise economic dynamism, and reduce the amount of leftism in the UK. It's the most best policy we can do.https://unherd.com/2021/05/is-it-the-tories-who-are-doomed/ …
19/ But you've got to actually do it. Deluding yourself about the politics won't work. But that is – demonstrably – what the govt has done so far, and it's already been humiliated repeatedly as a result. What it's left with is a waste of time and might set the cause *back*.
20/ So what should we do instead? The key is to make locals *want* housing near them. There is so much money on the table – so much wealth we're not creating right now – that this should be easy with the right mechanism. Think about *incentives*! https://revivingeconomicthinking.com/housing/
21/ Some people object that policies like Street Votes aren't enough. They wouldn't get us *everything* we want – OK! But the govt's current fiasco, like all the others before it, shows that being too ambitious – and ignoring incentives – gets you nothing at all. /END
Read this for an alternative view from someone very much worth listening to. Very much hope Anya is right and I am wrong.https://twitter.com/AnyaMartin8/status/1392884671432773633 …
Simon has different instincts to me on this, but similar goals, and knows this system very well - so him thinking the current proposals have promise is a mark against my views.https://twitter.com/SimonMagus/status/1392863182650232841 …
More grist to the "Sam is wrong" mill here.
Many of views about housing are influenced by (or directly stolen from) @bswud but he's much more optimistic about what the govt is doing than I am. Let's see who's right!https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2021/05/ben-southwood-why-planning-reform-may-work-this-time-round-delivering-us-the-new-homes-that-we-need.html …
This is basically why I *disagree* with Ben. NIMBYism *isn't* just about trying to inflate house prices – it's because new developments *can* be disruptive, costly, and congestion-inducing, with little benefit to you. The key is to make existing residents enjoy some benefit too.pic.twitter.com/bhLrlLtRuc
It's a Coasean problem. Existing residents have a veto that they can't sell or give up. If we make the veto tradeable, it can be reallocated to whoever values it most, and compensate the original owner for what it was worth to them.https://sambowman.substack.com/p/the-importance-of-alienability …
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