Building Holmes

I've just been listening to an address by Shadow Housing Minister, Grant Shapps, and heard what the Tories plan for housing should they win the next election.

Unsurprisingly they have hailed central planning as a failure - with fewer homes being built now than at any time since the Second World War, and not just because of the recession. Targets have failed to deliver new homes (I worked out from NHBC figures that only around 25,000 detached houses and bungalows will be completed in 2009 across the whole of Great Britain, with three fifths created by self-builders).

In place of centrally driven targets, the Tories propose leaving housing provision levels to the free market, by paying local authorities to grant planning permission for more houses and by relaxing the planning system to make it quicker and cheaper (this can only mean less consultation and accountability).

They hope that local communities will end up competing with one another to attract developers to build new housing in their area in order to help raise funds for new schools, hospitals, roads and other public services. In other words, they want to change the market entirely, so that new housing brings benefits to a local authority instead of costs.

Apparently such schemes are commonplace in Germany and elsewhere in Central Europe.

Something tells me, however, that with public spending cuts inevitable whoever gets into power next year, that there won't be any new money in this.

Instead the incentive payments will be in place of what would otherwise be cuts to local authority funding from Central Government.

In other words, unless local authorities grant consent for new houses they could be faced with having to either raise council tax significantly, or cut public services, both of which would probably be more unpopular with voters than the idea of allowing new housebuilding.

Just in case planning committees still get in the way though, the Tories are proposing some instances where local communities, via Local Housing Trusts, will have the power to grant themselves permission to build autonomously, cutting the planning committee out of the process altogether.

Such schemes would initially be exclusively to meet local affordable housing need, particularly in rural areas, but could include group self-build schemes.

This new housing would have some form of occupancy restriction on it, to ensure it remains affordable and in use by locals (to prevent it being sold off to wealthy outsiders as second homes). It could, however, help ensure the survival of many small villages all over the UK that are currently struggling to keep their local school, shop, post office and pub. Sound like a good idea?

They are also committing to the current plans to require all new housing to meet 'zero carbon' standards by 2016, but also to make massive improvements to existing housing stock to make it more energy efficient.

No doubt they also have plans to ensure that market forces bring this about too, without additional cost to central government! Get your chequebook ready.