It's well known that there's a shortage of housing in Britain, particularly in England. This has led to soaring house and rent prices.
Both main parties estimate that at least 300K houses need to be built every year, but last year only 158 000 were built.
There is also growing awareness that Britain's planning system is 'gummed up'. It's very difficult to build anything, anywhere. This has hampered the building of houses, and it's made Britain poorer.
NB it's not just housing, our last reservoir was built in 1991, and anything from data centers to Pylons takes and age to get built because of all the bureaucracy!
Why is the planning regime so complex?
It's rooted in the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act. this effectively nationalised the right to build on land, effectively. Before this landowners could do what they liked within broad rules. The 1947 act put control in the hands of local councils, with decisions made on a case by case basis within local plans.
Britain is unique in this sense, most European countries have zonal systems which means planning requests are practically guaranteed to be granted.
Things are made even more difficult by the green and grey belts. It's not only around London, there are 14 rungs around English cities covering 13% of England. Only 2% of greenbelt land has been developed since.
Huge expense...
Complex planning hoops go a long way to explaining the problems around HS2... which is costing 4 to 8 times more per mile compared to comparable high speed rail lines in France. For example we've had to spend £40M on a bat protection tunnel near Buckingham.
To cite a separate example, a housing development in Watford was refused planning in 2021 because it had moderate potential to harm bats, even there was no evidence of any bats being in the area!
What is Labour doing...?
Labour has published a new draft Planning Policy Framework
This would restore mandatory housing targets and force local authorities to build a certain number of homes each year, and review green belt boundaries.
They are also employing 300 more planning officers to establish a national taskforce to unblock bit developments.
They have also endorsed the idea of building on the grey belt... greenbelt land which was previously developed.
Politics for the young...?
Labour doesn't have many voters on Green Belt land so while these policies are going to piss off these people, they aren't going to lose many votes over it!
And it's mainly young people in need of affordable housing who are going to benefit, and hopefully soon, we need more housing, and other infrastructure developments too!
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There have to be controls on where we build or the developers would tear up all the countryside and we would never get it back. Not that it is all natural as unbuilt land is likely to be mostly farms (with a few golf courses). We should develop old industrial sites and accept that not everyone will be able to have a house. Some will make do with flats, but those need to be decently built.
I just looked it up and population growth is speeding up a little. We also need to replace a lot of old housing and make it much more efficient.
I can't imaging this sort of thing will change quickly as it all gets planned many years ahead and you can't magically find thousands of extra builders. Of course we could allow in lots of foreigners to do it! I do wonder about how their countries of origin do for key workers if we keep pinching them.
I know what you mean it's a slow old progress building! Of course, annoyingly there is enough stock it's just distributed inefficiently!
Too many NIMBY's for any govt. to take on a building plan, whatever the colour of the rosette, add in the tree huggers and eco zealots and one is on a road to nowhere.
Then if and when a housing project takes place, it creates problems that said govt. (pigs with snouts in the trough) do not address. No thought is given to the added pressure on schools and the local health service and ground level GP surgeries and dental services. But hey look at us we are the best govt. ever building all these houses.
The houses that get built are often unaffordable for local indigenous people, often snapped up by corporates to inflate the rental market, add in the OCG's who also invest in house buying as a way of "cleaning their money". Also people should question why a place the size of my town ( I refuse to call it a city, it isn't its a fucking town) has a ridiculous number of "turkish" barber shops. It ain't about the hair cuts.
If we build enough houses we'd have as much choice as for money laundering services!
On the contrary, it has increased here recently, but not everybody can afford buy a house anymore.