From the Chamber: Why the Government is wrong (mainly) on housing

Cllr Stephen Conway is leader of the Council and Executive Member for Housing, Partnerships and the Local Plan.

The government’s recently announced changes to the National Planning Policy Framework will require Wokingham to deliver 1,336 new homes per year, rather than the current 748.  

Our new local plan, with the existing numbers, will operate for some time.  But the government’s new housing requirement poses a serious threat to the character of the borough in years to come. 

The new figure is the result of a method of calculating need that uses data on existing house prices and local incomes to generate a housing allocation.  The more expensive an area’s housing, the more new homes it is required to build.

Two ambitions underpin the government’s insistence on increased numbers: first, a desire to stimulate growth in the economy to increase the tax take and address the public finance crisis; and second, a desire to make housing more affordable for those denied access to a home of their own.  

There are good reasons to believe that the government is over optimistic about relying on a massive increase in house building in the Southeast to produce the rapid growth that it desires.  

The constraints on delivery in our area are very real in terms of the availability of land and service infrastructure; and even the construction industry, which stands to gain, wonders how it can access the labour and materials needed, especially when many housing developments across the Southeast would have to be approved at about the same time.  

The second objective – increasing the affordability of market housing – is highly unlikely to be achieved in an area like ours. 

Recent experience in our borough tells us that building more market houses causes prices to rise not fall.  Our proximity to London means that migration from the capital sustains ever higher prices, while local need often remains unmet.  Movement out of London has of course been going on for generations, but it’s been turbocharged by the pandemic and new methods of working from home.

The government has misdiagnosed the problem. Angela Rayner tells us that the planning system is blocking housing delivery – which she blames on bureaucratic processes and Nimbyism on planning committees.

But the real clog on delivery of the kind she wants is the dysfunctionality of the housing market. 

Around a million new homes across the country have planning permission but have not been built because developers have no interest in seeing prices fall.  They control the release of new housing to keep prices high.

This inevitable feature of the housing market means that local need is most likely to be met by other means. For this reason, I welcome the government’s commitment to funding the building of more Affordable Housing – that is, discounted market homes, shared-ownership schemes, affordable sub-market rental properties, and homes for social rents, which provide the most truly affordable housing.

We in Wokingham will be seeking to ensure we contribute our share of genuinely Affordable Housing to meet real local demand.  

But we will continue to make the case that the government’s approach to market housing delivery in the Southeast is fundamentally flawed and needs to be changed.

The government should be bold and adopt a truly national approach to planning that encourages more investment and opportunity in those areas that really need it, rather than go for the easy and time-honoured option of cramming more market housing into the already overcrowded Southeast.