One of David Cameron’s strengths is also one of his biggest weaknesses: salesmanship skills that too often seek to scapegoat the wrong people. He is vilifying councils for the country’s lack of housebuilding without bothering to understand housing delivery or own up to the damage done by his government since the general election.
Most councils, including growth cities like Cambridge, are determined to deliver more housing. But they are hampered by Whitehall red tape and repeated government interferences in planning and housing policy, such as waiving the requirement for developers to build affordable homes and the 1% rent cut for social housing tenants.
Like the rest of Britain, Cambridgeshire has lots of land that is ripe for development. Councils have assisted private developers to get planning approval for many of these sites: they are ready to be developed, and it’s the private sector that’s being slow to begin construction. Yet the prime minister prefers to kick councils while needlessly letting developers off planning obligations.
Meanwhile, the local planning system is complicated by layers of consultation and inspection, and the planning inspectorate is starved of resources and has a backlog of work. Councils can therefore face up to a 12-month delay after submitting ambitious new housing plans before reviews begin, making it trickier to meet Cameron’s 2017 deadline.
The government appears determined to kill off new housing at affordable rents, the only route for many people on to the housing ladder. Our best-laid plans to build more housing in Cambridge are being scuppered because we can no longer enforce developers to fund affordable housing.
Neither can we invest our housing revenue account balances into affordable rent housing, due to George Osborne’s July budget. The Treasury is now forcing councils in expensive areas such as Cambridge to sell new rental housing as it becomes empty, with the Treasury expropriating all the proceeds.
Housing association housebuilding plans have also been torpedoed by the extension of right to buy; they must now totally rewrite their business plans and withdraw from many new-build deals.
Government policy seesaws go on and on. Greenfield developments, for example, were consistently denounced and blocked by Eric Pickles in the runup to the general election, but there’s not nearly as much criticism of them these days.
Labour-led cities like Cambridge, and our Tory South Cambridgeshire neighbours, thank government for city-deal transport investment that helps new housing. But it’s no wonder that we are cynical about the lurches and extremes facing us in the next five-year stretch.
Lewis Herbert is a Labour councillor and the leader of Cambridge city council.
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