All proper democracies have two tiers, central and local. They are equally vital, but in England the second tier is all but dead. Local democracy has been crippled by Whitehall since Margaret Thatcher’s rate-capping in the 1980s and councils became cash-strapped agencies of central government. There are now fewer councillors in Britain than there are local councils in France.
This week the Labour government has laid out its plan to remove the last real discretion local people have enjoyed: the freedom to order the environs of where they and their families live. Participation in planning is to be stifled following a sustained barrage of abuse from Keir Starmer and his housing minister, Angela Rayner. They have dismissed people exercising their democratic rights as nimbys, reactionaries, blockers, bureaucrats, declinists and newt-lovers.
Councils in England will no longer have the power to contest developments. Planning is to be centralised – or “regionalised” – and local planning offices and committees are to be disempowered. Algorithmic housing targets are to be imposed on rural communities and any proper control over a development’s location, scale and appearance removed. Rayner has already closed the government’s Office for Place, charged with monitoring the quality and appearance of new development. Meanwhile, Starmer is making no effort to build houses in the biggest constituency “back yard” in England: the space that still stands empty and useless for an HS2 behind Euston that has, so far, failed to materialise.
Denying local people a meaningful say in their surroundings is undemocratic. Rayner’s beneficiaries are not to be homeless or poor people. In a bid to hit Labour’s target of building 1.5m homes, Rayner’s department is to rely on the “volume housing” developers of executive homes. She is not renewing towns by ending stamp duty on downsizing or ending VAT on refurbishment. She wants to press ahead with carbon-rich new buildings rather than reusing old ones, which is why she allowed Marks & Spencer its massively carbon-intensive new plan for Oxford Street.
Rayner is doing nothing through regional policy to repopulate the empty streets – and houses – visible in any city in the north. She is doing nothing to fill the acres of brownfield sites across derelict England. She is not even revising the council tax bands of wealthy properties or otherwise encouraging big houses to be sold or sublet. Instead, through harsh new legislation, she wants to penalise the private rented sector which alone confronts the homelessness of the extreme poor, particularly immigrants – the true housing crisis in England. What her sprawling new estates will do for them is zero.
Of course, the state must have some care for the housing of its citizens, and this will sometimes involve sacrificing back yards. But in a quickly deindustrialising and densely populated country, the careful reuse of land should be the top priority. Most countries zone their land so that everyone – residents, developers and leisure users alike – can put it to best use.
Such strategic planning in England used to be a county responsibility. The landscape was effectively – and democratically – zoned. It produced some of the most extensive new housing developments in the 20th century. Everyone knew where they were and what would be permissible.
That order has collapsed into anarchy. Planning has become a battleground, largely resolved by inspectors and judges on a site-by-site basis. Rayner wants to replace this through so-called regional mayors. This is a contradiction in terms. Britons identify mayors with towns and cities. Ministers including John Prescott tried to regionalise England and failed. Today “regional” is merely code for central direction.
In truth, this Labour government wants to take control of the land of England, much as its predecessors centralised control of its health and education. In doing so it will complete the centre’s grasp of power over the local, a grasp that has patently not worked. It will not “cure” any crisis. It is anti-democratic – and will do little more than aid Reform.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
• This article was amended on 11 December 2024. An earlier version referred to Britain instead of England.
