The Big Read “England’s ‘Nimby’ conundrum” (January 16) identifies a range of issues that hold up building the new homes we need. But blaming the planning system and Nimbyism (“not in my back yard”) is to miss a core issue — building more homes will not on its own solve the crisis since new builds contribute less than 1 per cent each year to the stock of homes.
We also need to make better use of our existing stock, by encouraging the elderly to downsize by waiving stamp duty, releasing under-occupied homes for households needing them, and encouraging the building of more homes suited to “downsizers”.
Fundamentally, we need to align our taxation policy better with our housing objectives. We can start by revaluing homes for council tax, so that those of us living in high-value properties (whose values have gone up so much in recent years) pay more.
Of course we must build more too. This means all planning authorities having an up-to-date local plan (60 per cent do not). The lack of plans increases uncertainty and risk for developers, potentially resulting in delays. Often this means more time and costs taken up in appeals, with decisions ultimately taken by ministers not local councillors. Two other matters are critical. First, mandatory local housebuilding targets should be restored since the new policy making them “advisory” is almost certainly going to lead to less new building than we need. Second, if we are to have local plans in place and speedy decisions on applications, we must ensure planning authorities are better resourced since there has been a 40 per cent cut in their staffing since 2010.
Finally, we need policy to be much more integrated and consistent than it is. When we last built the homes we needed (it was in the 1970s) there was just one government department involved. Now there are several and they are not all pulling in the same housing direction.
Professor Tony Crook
Emeritus Professor of Town & Regional Planning,
The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK
