Planning ahead

Britain desperately needs more housing. It also desperately needs the infrastructure that will support that housing. It needs the right kinds of housing built in places where people are able to access the kinds of jobs, businesses and services they need to live good, fulfilling lives. It also needs to respond to the change in our climate in all these areas and more – building more reservoirs and transforming the way we use agricultural land to maximise the amount of food and energy we can produce.

Big change is needed. Small-minded voices must be overruled. NIMBYism has no place in an ambitious modern country. All of which is the easy part to say but has proved the incredibly difficult part to deliver over long years of delay, debate and distraction.

Every time we discuss the defence budget, the phrase “the first duty of government is to protect its citizens” is rightly used. But protection from war is just one part of the equation. The security of the citizenry is about more than safety from enemy nations. Security means ensuring citizens can enjoy homes and lives that do not feel fragile and under threat.

As the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) is released today, the sense of security for our lives will need to be at the heart of what is on offer.

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However, we are also an overcentralised country with a new Prime Minister who is embracing a devolution agenda that will give local politicians more powers. That might mean powers to build – but will also mean they will be under significant pressure to say “not in my back yard”.

Then there is nature. Our ‘green and pleasant land’ is also central to the English identity (the NPPF applies only to England). The conflict between protecting nature and providing homes is real and should not be wished away either by naturalists who veer too often into NIMBYism or by the newer but equally passionate YIMBY movement. These voices too often handwave away concerns about nature and, in their desire to get something – anything – built are at times too unwilling to listen closely to concerns about what it is that is being built and how appropriate the choices being made are.

How do we build national frameworks that balance the needs of all with the desires of the loudest locals? How do we deliver the houses we actually need rather than the ones likely to bring developers the most profit? How do we ensure our infrastructure can cope with our changing climate? How can we protect nature while building at scale?

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These are the tensions that sit under the surface of so much of our politics today. There are very real choices to be made and when they are, there will be winners and losers. Big ambitions always have loud opponents. It is why politicians have for so long only been willing to make small choices. But the paucity of decades of imagination is what has led to the choices facing us being so hard.

The nettle must be grasped and it has to be done now. We need a permissive national framework for building that enables local input but not NIMBY stagnation. We need national rules that harness YIMBY enthusiasm but also ensure developers are directed to build what is needed.

We need a political narrative that is willing to stand up and make hard decisions that will be unpopular with the noisy few – and to be able to stick with them in the face of that noise.

We need a story about the future we are planning for. We need to see results.

None of this will be easy. Governing isn’t easy. But if we are going to fix the multitude of problems we face, it has to start with building many more of the right houses in the right places and standing up to those who would try to stop that. 

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