Watch what happens in Swale, as it’s a tale that will be repeated often in the next few years. Here in Kent is a test of Labour’s determination to plough through local planning decisions in order to build the homes everyone knows are needed in a national housing crisis. The issue is this: in a time when localism is in vogue, who’s in charge? The democratically elected local council or the Westminster government elected on a key pledge to build 1.5m homes in five years? It’s also a question of the balance of power between developers and government: housebuilders need to make a profit, but they must be kept to their promises.
Two weeks ago, Swale borough council’s planning committee was meeting to vote on an application to build a garden village. The site for 8,400 new houses near Sittingbourne includes plans for affordable homes, schools, GP surgeries, shops, sheltered housing, upgraded railway stations and a crucial relief road.
The planning committee was just about to reject it when hours before the vote a message came through from Whitehall: Angela Rayner was calling in the decision so her Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government would have the final say. Outraged, the committee went ahead and voted (powerlessly) against it.
Despite vigorous local opposition, councillors fear Rayner will approve the development. Labour leads Swale council, just, with no overall control. Tory councillor Julien Speed, a member of the planning committee, calls this “an affront to local democracy”. “What’s the point of councils?” he said to me. “This massive site is not in our local plan, but the government is hellbent on hitting its housing target. This is the garden of England and we will lose some orchards.” It’s not green belt, but the scheme will build on “some high-grade farming land Britain needs for food security” (though it’s the big local farming family choosing to sell the land).
Those resisting such local developments can rightly point to land banks for 1.1m homes in England that already have planning permission: developers hoard land waiting for values to rise, refusing to build too many homes for fear of prices falling. This is surely the first place the government should intervene, they say. Will Rayner summon her powers to break through these perverse blockages?
In Swale, not everyone locally is opposed. The site covers part of the Sittingbourne and Sheppey constituency of Labour MP Kevin McKenna, who won the seat from the Tories in July: he backs the plan. Together we drove round the area, heavily industrial, though the garden village will cover agricultural land. “There’s such a need for housing nationally, for national growth,” he says. “And yes, it will also be for DFLs [Down from Londons], as 60% of residents commute to London.” Is Labour locally torn? Some councillors may be relieved to have this decision taken out of their hands, free to say they voted against while quietly recognising the country needs to build.
There is another advantage to Whitehall stepping in, says McKenna. Local people harbour a justified distrust of developers who all too often build lucrative executive homes – and then claim they’ve run out of money for the affordable housing or community facilities promised in less-than-honest master plans. Councils lack the muscle, with depleted planning departments, to force developers to keep their promises. McKenna says Whitehall planners have greater powers to tip that asymmetry in negotiating with developers, warning they will only get permission to build if they raise the percentage of affordable housing and keep their community pledges.
Nothing need stop Rayner from warning all developers that she’s minded to reject plans unless they agree to such conditions, Prof Tony Travers of the London School of Economics says. “She could force those sitting on land banks to get digging or lose their planning permission.” In other words, use it or lose it. Housebuilding is the great market failure, where high demand doesn’t produce high supply: it urgently needs government intervention.
“She could use emergency powers to get building, as used in wartime or during Covid,” Travers says, and create development corporations with power to compulsorily purchase land and fast-track planning. That was the only way London and Liverpool docklands could be done, or the Olympic Park, or postwar new towns. “She could use that power to develop large tracts of low-value brownfield wastelands,” he says.
On this issue, the national interest sometimes requires riding roughshod over local sentiment. How else would railways, roads, reservoirs or all the essentials of progress have been built? McKenna is taking a brave stand as local MP in backing this large development. (His neighbouring Tory MP is opposed.) He is unafraid to argue with constituents about the severity of the national housing crisis and the urgent need for economic growth. Having won the seat by a margin of only 355 votes, self-preservation might have urged someone less principled to join the nimbys.
But he is philosophical about that, with a sense of purpose that will be needed from many other Labour MPs who will soon find themselves with large housing developments, solar farms, wind turbines, National Grid stations or pylons striding across their patch, to vociferous local protest. “It’s not going to save my seat if we don’t hit our national housing target, if we don’t build to generate economic growth and raise people’s living standards. Labour would lose anyway.”
A bit more of that fearlessness would be welcome in the cabinet. Act as if there is only one term. Drive on regardless of criticism, get it done and nail it down: that’s the best chance of getting another five years.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
