Jeremy's Blog 13th October 2023: Labour Party Development Policy

This article by Jeremy Moody first appeared in the CAAV e-Briefing of 12th October 2023

This week’s Labour Party Conference has brought its pro-development policies to the fore, driven by answering the housing shortage. Keir Starmer has crystallised the policy with his phrase about “bulldozing” an over-localised planning system. He has been supported in this by both Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor, and Angela Rayner, deputy leader, carrying forward the work done by Lisa Nandy, her predecessor as shadow Levelling Up Secretary. Delivering housing for society has become an imperative. As Sir Keir told yesterday’s Today programme:

“We are going to have to do things that previous governments have not done because otherwise we will end up where we are now which is talking about housing but not getting very much done.”

Labour has now seized the pro-development political position, leaving voters tending to oppose it divided between the other parties. An irony is that many of the tools it will need are being put in place now by the present Government, potentially clearing the way for speedier action were Labour to win the election. Nearing the statute book, the Levelling Up Bill provides for development corporations, updates law for new towns, enables accelerating approval processes, authorises design codes and other changes. For the first time in 65 years, compensation at less than market value could be paid for land taken - with the risks of that for development markets seen in the 1950s. The official target of 300,000 houses a year is carried forward.

With these strong continuities of formal policy, Labour’s points of distinction, beyond the conference language used, include:

• the focus of the commitment. These policies look likely to be manifesto commitments with policy out in the open. The present Government has been frustrated by its backbenchers but Labour front- and back-benchers have been just as active in opposing local development.
• the express prospect of new towns as a key part of this, the natural answer to our present planning conundrums as already recognised in current government thinking, if not action, with the model developed 5 years ago by Oliver Letwin’s reports
• the apparent willingness to impose new towns in areas of growth and high housing need after a six month consultation on sites. This may be the main way to meet the housing target. If there are not nationally enforceable local housing targets, then bypassed councils could be free to oppose, having less pressure to provide housing themselves.

The immediate contrast is over the green belts. Meant to be a means to keep cities separate, they have become an anti-development totem, repeatedly enlarged by governments making gestures. Development has then had to leapfrog ever further. The present Government looks to urban redevelopment for housing while protecting green belts. Labour looks to develop the “grey belt”, talking of using its scrub and derelict land. With each major party looking to develop land sensitive to the other, the scale of need means we are likely to require both: none of this is easy.

However, not only might there be higher biodiversity on those “grey” areas but the scale of new towns needed are likely to stretch well beyond them with issues, environmental, agricultural and more, yet to be considered. Indeed, the Conference dwelt little on environmental matters.

That gets to the question of whether such a top-down approach, potentially echoing the late 1940s and the gentleman in Whitehall knowing best, can actually be sustained in a society with many having an entrenched culture of resistance to development. 50 years ago, a new airport could not be imposed on the south east. There is an argument that we have so devolved power and given tools for challenge that no big decisions can be taken. Answering our major housing need has defeated this Government; could a new one really achieve?