The rationale for the planning and infrastructure bill is that planning is the main reason for the tardy rate of housebuilding (The Guardian view on the planning bill: new towns must be for people who need them, 11 March). Removing red tape, it is supposed, will facilitate the market speeding up housebuilding. In reality there are more than 1m plots of land that have planning permission and have not been built on. That’s because housebuilding is dominated by large-volume builders that build at a pace and scale to maximise profits and shareholder dividends.
The solution to what’s called the “housing affordability crisis” does not lie in the market. It lies with making social-rent council housing the priority, as the Attlee government did. Angela Rayner cannot deliver a “council housing revolution” without funding it. Instead, Labour has maintained the Tory definition of affordable housing that includes funding affordable rent, shared ownership and affordable private rent.
