Angela Rayner is wrong to target towns and villages in her quest to build 1.5m extra houses, an influential think tank has said.
The Resolution Foundation said building more properties in expensive areas that were not near particularly productive jobs would do little to help the Government boost growth.
The think tank highlighted Cromer and Sheringham on the Norfolk coast, or Kingsbridge and Dartmouth in Devon, as examples of areas targeted for development that it thought were misguided.
Lord Willetts, who has helped to oversee the report, branded the Government’s building targets “perverse”.
Ms Rayner, the Housing Secretary, should instead target cities such as Manchester and Birmingham for new homes, he said. It is urban hubs like these where properties are actually needed to house workers and boost growth.
We’ve already got a system telling us where people want houses built – prices. Higher prices mean folk want more housing in that location.
To start mithering about “productive jobs” is to go back to having that national planning system that’s worked so well this past 77 years. So, use prices.
With the added bonus that if we do just use prices then we’ve not got to have any planning atall. The market unadorned will deal very well if given its head because, you know, prices and markets, see?
The next step is internal migration controls.
“We’re building new homes in Manchester”
I don’t wanna live in Manchester!
“You’ll move to Manchester and like it!”
I have often holidayed in those areas, and They do have a point. Increasing the supply of houses in those areas is just increasing the number of second homes in those areas. The high demand for second homes in those areas, as shown by the high prices means they will sell, but those new homes won’t have much impact on the housing crisis.
Nope Tim, you are wrong. If your argument was ‘don’t have targets, let the market decide’ you might be on stronger ground.
Lord Willetts said: “The issue is the criterion the Government is using is the gap between property prices and average incomes in the area.
So not actually where prices are highest.
the think tank highlighted Cromer and Sheringham on the Norfolk coast, or Kingsbridge and Dartmouth in Devon,
These are areas where the main industries are ‘running holiday homes’ and ‘collecting a pension’.
On a per sq ft basis, prices are higher in London, the SE and the more successful provincial cities ie where the jobs are. The Telegraph chart shows that lower housing targets in London, where the most expensive property in the nation can be found.
My first published letter to what was then the Torygraph, back in the Blair terror, asked “Are New Labour politicians corrupt or incompetent? In fact, we’ve discovered they’re a little of both.” On current form, with this lot, that answer is just “both”…
“We’ve already got a system telling us where people want houses built – prices. Higher prices mean folk want more housing in that location.”
Yes but not how much more housing is demanded in that location. A stately home is worth many millions, but that high price does not mean the solution to the country’s housing problems lies in building more stately homes. Similarly it does not lie in building more ‘executive homes’ in swanky parts of the country either. Somewhere has to have mass housing built, and as suggested, thats probably best to be around existing mass large conurbations as the jobs are more likely to be there than in Bourton on the Water.
Jim, just wait till we see Waheed’s latest bung – oops! sorry, DONATION – to TTK…
Cromer, Sheringham, Kingsbridge and Dartmouth, eh?
This is just spite. I’m sure loads of diversity wants to live in those areas instead of the already diversity-rich metropolitan areas. For years now London has been having a Stratford-style boom in diversity tenements, as anyone with eyes can see,
Yeah, places like Cromer don’t have any employers or reasons to live there and are remote in terms of roads and rail to elsewhere. Didn’t they do geography at school? Towns exist for reasons. You can’t just impose your wishes in the face of geographical reality.
Nor can you build houses in the face of other realities. Can you get an electrician or a plumber now? How do you think that will be affected by a massive building programme in the middle of nowhere? Who is going to build these houses? Won’t they need the same skills as those who are expected to make existing housing stock in the cities fit for the migrants? And to do up the hotels those migrants have been living in up to now and wrecked. Then there’s the material. Timber, bricks, blocks, windows and all the rest. Prices will go up, vailability will go down. It’s a stupid plan.
Several hundred thousand of these houses could easily be built in the Middle East and Africa, where I’ve heard that things are a lot cheaper.
Simon:
If they built them in the ME and Africa then it would be very difficult for the recipients to vote for Labor.
Which is the whole point.
Jim,
“Somewhere has to have mass housing built, and as suggested, thats probably best to be around existing mass large conurbations as the jobs are more likely to be there than in Bourton on the Water.”
But Bourton-on-the-Water is around existing large conurbations. People live there and work in or around Cheltenham, Gloucester, Cirencester, Oxford. These Cotswold villages and towns used to be cheap before car ownership, because if you lived there, you couldn’t do much except retire or work in agriculture or a local shop.
There are cheap rural places in the South of England, like Yeovil, and that reflects the demand because Yeovil is a long way from highly paid work.
Manchester suffers from a peculiarly British urban disease. There is a city centre that is OK, there is a ring of suburb that is kind of OK (and was in many places vibrant and diverse long before vibrant diversity was a thing), and between these a ring of death established by housing the entire welfare population there.
That ring is made almost impassable by some freaks of geography, poor planning decisions, and more recently net zero insanity closing various roads to cars.
Other than that I’d move back with little hesitation.
Marius,
“These are areas where the main industries are ‘running holiday homes’ and ‘collecting a pension’.”
So what’s the problem? More holiday homes means cheaper holidays for people, in the same way that more cars being made makes cars cheaper for people.
M:
“If they built them in the ME and Africa then it would be very difficult for the recipients to vote for Labor.
Which is the whole point.”
Point taken. But where there’s a will, there’s a way. I hear postal voting is a strong cultural custom in the Labour heartlands…
BiG,
I don’t think I’ve been anywhere in the UK where there is such a rapid shift in area as there is from the Wythenshawe estate to the bits around it like Cheadle Hulme and Wilmslow. It’s like if Clarence Boddicker moved in next door to Downton Abbey.
‘areas where the main industries are ‘running holiday homes’ and ‘collecting a pension’
But more (holiday) homes will make these areas less desirable,
for holidays and pensioners, and thus remove the jobs that would be needed for the new resident.
Price of housing, reflects its desirability, desirability for many means a good distance away from other people
Yeovil is a shit town, there are some useful businesses in the industrial estates on the edge but the town centre is to be avoided.
Why don’t we just let the migrants work from home (Asia)?
“Higher prices mean folk want more housing in that location.”
Or the Government is subsidising them via housing benefit.
After a bit of surfing the internet, my previous comment should read totally corrupt. The Labour Party accepted a £4,000,000 donation from an offshore hedge fund which just happens to have a £40,000,000 investment in climate change prevention.
I read jgh’s comment first. Of course, for folks with the entire family (1, 2 or 3 generations on benefits), why does it matter where they live? Couldn’t they be shipped off to somewhere cheap(er)? Northern Oirland, or Jockistan.
Of course, for folks with the entire family (1, 2 or 3 generations on benefits), why does it matter where they live? Couldn’t they be shipped off to somewhere cheap(er)? Northern Oirland, or Jockistan.
Or save the taxpayer some money, ship them off to Kabul.
I’m sure there’s some relatively cheap property to put them up in there.
If they don’t want to go, they can get a job.
‘they can get a job.’
You’re persuading me, Chernyy.
Indeed why not immediately conscript all illegals, and use them as forced labour to clean the sewers or fill the potholes. Anyone who refuses to trek off into the bush and shovel cow shit could be flogged for disrespect of the law.
Didn’t they use to call this slavery or something??
David,
“Or the Government is subsidising them via housing benefit.”
It’s certainly part of the problem in London. Which is why housing benefit should be capped based on median property values for the UK. We’ll look after you, make sure you have a roof over your head, but it’ll be in a cheap place. Useless, long-term unemployed people can sit around watching game shows just as easily in Bolsover than Islington.
Now the argument whenever I say this is “but what about the people working at Pret a Manger that London needs and can’t afford to live there without it” and well, if people want them, they can pay for them. Maybe we get £50K/year baristas and your cup of coffee rises in price. Or maybe removing the subsidy leads to people getting a coffee machine, or shops use more vending machines instead of people and we all get richer.