We need a national plan for housing

Life feels better when you have a plan, according to the Scottish Widow advert. This is so self-evidently true that the government’s aversion to planning is as bizarre as it is calamitous. From climate change adaptation and mitigation, demonstrated in the recent flooding crisis, to the skills needed for economic renewal, this governmental deficiency persistently lets down Britain.

Nowhere, however, is this failure felt more painfully than in respect of housing. In contrast to our response to the global recession of 2008, Britain built its way to recovery following the Wall Street crash of 1929. In every year from 1933 to 1936, before rearmament could have made any difference, GDP growth exceeded 4%. The number of houses built by the private sector played a key part in this, rising from 133,000 in 1931-32 to 293,000 in 1934-35 and 279,000 in 1935-36.

Today’s economic recovery is not built on the firm foundations of the new homes of the 1930s. Indeed, we are so starved of new housing supply – only 98,280 homes were started in the 12 months to December 2012 – that an economic recovery that has barely begun already threatens to overheat amid a housing bubble.

According to Shelter, if wages had gone up by as much as house prices since 1997, the average person would be earning £29,344 more a year. The equivalent figure for my neighbourhood is an eye-watering £64,797. This is almost £40,000 more than the average UK salary. Yet, like all of London, this is an area whose strength derives from its diversity.

Where the improvement in schools and reduction in crime achieved under the last government encouraged families to stay in London, the bubble being inflated under this government is pricing them out. The next rung on the housing ladder, whether the first or subsequent, moves further out of reach. Overcrowding is increasingly prevalent in a burgeoning private rented sector.

The need for affordable housing is overwhelming. In Southwark, where I am a councillor, we have 22,000 people on the waiting list for a Council home. Every week, I meet families living in overcrowded accommodation, single people unable to leave their parental home, people in private rented accommodation who are choosing whether to pay their rent or eat. Southwark has made a commitment to deliver 11,000 new Council homes, but this level of leadership on affordable housing is unique, even in London where the need is greatest.

The increase in the Right to Buy subsidy means that the rate at which Councils are losing affordable homes is increasing dramatically – already in this calendar year, the Council has received more than double the number of Right to Buy applications it received in the whole of 2013. The government’s new definition of an ‘affordable’ home as one which is priced at 80% of market rent, in most areas of London will mean that new ‘affordable’ homes are not affordable at all.

Planning is a progressive discipline, which Labour should embrace. It is the means by which we broker the space between individual self-interest and collective community need, and ensure that those who profit from development also contribute to meeting the additional needs which it will generate.

We are all being let down by the government’s failure to plan adequately. On the one hand, it is widely recognised that Labour’s target of 200,000 new homes a year corresponds to what is required to meet housing need. On the other, opposition to specific developments becomes ever more entrenched. Each position side-steps the other; in fact people are often happy to hold both.

Having worked as a planner for almost two decades, I know it’s possible to overcome these conflicts, bringing communities together to build more homes. To take this forward on the scale that our national need demands, we require both stronger national leadership and deeper local engagement.

The broad decision on where new housing should be developed is one to be decided through our national democratic process. The next Labour government must bring to this process the kind of comprehensive national plan for housing that this government is incapable of delivering. This should be supported by thoroughgoing and effective engagement with impacted communities.

As we are planning for housing, so we should also be intervening to make the provision of that housing as fair and affordable as possible – changing the criteria and reducing the subsidy for Right to Buy, to stem the loss of affordable homes; regulating the private rented sector to give more security to tenants, moderate unfair rent increases and set minimum standards for the size of accommodation which can be provided in relation to the rent which is charged.

Throughout his leadership Ed Miliband has demonstrated a capacity to be ahead of the curve and to seize upon issues well before they become Westminster village fashion. The squeezed middle, for example, went from being derided when Ed first spoke of it to being the Oxford dictionary word of the year. Ed is in touch with popular concerns in a way that his opponents persistently fail to be. The prime minister responds to Ed’s campaigning on the cost of living by claiming Labour lacks an economic policy.

What the prime minister cannot see, encased in his shambolic Number 10 bunker, is that reducing the cost of living is Labour’s economic policy. Nothing is more central to this, as Ed has explained, than increasing the supply of housing to reduce its cost and sustain an economic recovery on real engineering, not financial engineering.

Ed’s housing focus gives Labour something to really fight for in May 2015. To deliver, as prime minister, upon what he’s absolutely right to promise, Ed needs a national plan for housing combining leadership from the very top with deeper engagement in local communities. The ideological Tory opposition to planning means they won’t deliver this but there’s no reason why Ed cannot build one nation, quite literally.