To suggest that a few planning measures will lead to “the biggest boost in affordable housing in a generation” as the leadership did at this year’s Labour conference calls in to question the credibility of the party’s response to the national housing crisis (Editorial, 11 October). Studies by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Shelter and University College London show that there is a need for investment in a huge programme of social housing over the next five to 10 years.
There is an urgent need for housing policies to: 1) Fund genuinely affordable housing programmes required for at least the next 10 years. 2) Introduce rent control or restrictions in the private rented sector. 3) Fund local authorities so they can fulfil their statutory duties to improve housing conditions for millions of vulnerable people. 4) Fund improvements in existing housing stock to address global warming, poverty and resultant ill health. 5) Bring building standards for new housing up to somewhere near Passivhaus standards.
There is also a moral duty to address the deregulation of health and safety that led to the biggest disaster ever in social housing – the Grenfell Tower fire. Surely the party should be offering much more to the millions of people who need relief from poor housing conditions.
Martin Walsh
Worcester
• In the past decade 1.4m homes have built, yet the housing crisis worsens (Housing developers could override local objections under Labour, says Starmer, 11 October). Why? The problem isn’t planning: 1.1m homes granted planning permission in England in the last decade are yet to be built. Meanwhile 2m council homes have been sold off and housing grants have been slashed.
Keir Starmer’s bullish proposals will solve nothing. The problem is inflated land values, making homes too expensive to buy or rent. New housing is marketed off-plan to investors across the world, leaving many new homes empty as safety deposit boxes. And property is taxed minimally, on the basis of 30-year-old land values.
The majority of us live in towns and cities where most new housing is proposed, usually on poorer land. Ignoring people’s objections to the lack of schools, open space or loss of daylight will achieve nothing but create bleak slums and disenfranchised communities.
We need a new deal that radically expands public housing, reduces land values through a wealth tax, is framed by strategic planning for need, and codesigns housing with local communities to create excellent urban spaces.
Michael Ball
London
• Keir Starmer’s plan to bulldoze regulations won’t bring the bottom rung of the ladder any closer. Between 1997 and 2021, average prices rose from 3.5 times average earnings to 9.1, driven almost entirely by minimal interest rates following the 2008 banking crisis, supplemented by the effect of George Osborne’s help to buy.
The fact is that supply will never fix affordability because developers will not increase it to the point where they have to drop prices. His bulldozing will do nothing except hand developers more planning consents for them to take their time with. If he doesn’t know that, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. While this Ponzi scheme persists, the need is for social housing.
John Worrall
Cromer, Norfolk
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