US Edition
Young people in the UK today must be wondering what the point is. The point of working hard at school, getting a good job and saving up. It’s not like they will be able to afford a home anyway.
Forever denied the opportunity their parents took for granted, owning a home is a distant dream. Demand massively outstrips supply, especially in the cities, and our bureaucratic planning system means that only a trickle of new homes arrive on the market each year.
Helping people onto the housing ladder is important, but the benefits of planning reform go far wider.
Factories, laboratories, shops, offices, roads, railways and ports are all held up by the bureaucratic monolith that is the British planning system. It’s not just young people who are hurt by this, our whole economy is stuck in a low-growth mire of our own making.
New research from the Growth Commission reveals that by fixing our planning system, we could grow the economy by more than 6pc over the next twenty years. UK GDP in the second quarter of 2023 was 1.8pc higher than the fourth quarter of 2019. But per capita growth has been almost non-existent: Britain is stagnating.
How do we fix our planning system? Instead of a haphazard, increasingly complex approach to planning laws and development with the complaints of the few obstructing the needs of the many, Britain needs a forward-looking approach to planning permission.
By introducing zoning, we can designate which areas are suitable for development, and presume in favour of building for all but the most extreme cases.
This approach, which has already proved successful in Australia, would increase supply and help young people get on the housing ladder all while protecting green spaces. It would also put an end to ridiculous decisions like the recent move to block the planning permission for a data centre on the site of an old quarry next to the M25.
Our current planning system prizes bureaucracy over common sense. When a dispute arises in our current system, people wanting to build enter a lottery of appeals and counter-appeals that drags on for years, and they almost never win.
This has produced a vast fatberg of delayed projects, clogging up our planning system and holding back growth. The solution is not to rubber stamp every project, as critics of planning reform often allege. It’s about introducing a logical, evidence-based process which reaches the right decision quickly.
The country that built the Industrial Revolution looks on with envy as the rest of the world reaps the benefits of ultrafast railways, new nuclear power stations and onshore wind farms as our own infrastructure creaks.
Endless delays to planning permission mean costs spiral and ambitions are curtailed. Entrepreneurs starting businesses are forced to relocate for better transport links, enhancing regional inequality. Polluting fossil fuel plants are kept open in the absence of low-carbon alternatives.
Projects that could be providing cheap, emissions-free electricity to local businesses remain unrealised. Introducing a streamlined planning process for large projects of national significance like these could reduce delays by 75pc, laying the groundwork for growth.
These proposals may appear simple but government after government has failed to make the difference. We must look at this problem again with renewed political will.
As the Growth Commission’s report proves, planning reform alone has the power to get Britain growing again. Stagnation is not an option.
Our public services are crumbling without the tax revenue to pay for modernisation. Our young people are being squeezed out of jobs by unaffordable rents. Our businesses are moving overseas to find more competitive markets.
There is an electoral warning too for the Conservative Party. Myopic Nimbyism will eventually isolate voters nationally.
A quick glance at Canada, where the Canadian Conservative leader’s push for growth and housing has spurred them from the doldrums to a 13-point poll lead on Mr Trudeau, shows that being pro-growth, pro-housing has an electoral benefit.
Politicians should remember that home may be where the heart is but building homes is where the growth is.
Sir Simon Clarke is a Conservative MP and former Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities
Sunak must seize this moment to smash up planning rules
Politicians should remember that building homes is where the growth is