Details are sketchy. Baroness Warsi has spoken of building these houses on government-owned surplus brownfield land, such as the DEFRA site in Guildford. She speaks as if these houses will be owned by the Government, which seems unlikely. They are more likely to be council houses owned by local authority (LA). Another issue is the role of registered social landlords (RSLs). Many LAs have no council houses. They have been transferred to RSLs, who repair and maintain them, and collect the rent. Does the right to buy apply to RSL properties?

Let’s leave such details to one side. What will actually happen? A council house is sold at, say, 80% of its market price to its tenant. There might be some doubt as to whether a council tenant could get a mortgage deposit and repaymenst even at 80%, but perhaps they will. And a new council house has been built – by house builders, who have been paid. So what’s the net effect?

A new house has been built and paid for, as a result of the government subsidy. Who received that subsidy? The house builder. So this is the Holy Grail for Bellway and Taylor-Wimpey. A way of selling more houses, whilst maintaining house prices. The net effect is that the Government -actually the taxpayer – is paying Taylor-Wimpey so they can sell new houses and yet maintain current absurd house prices.

Its a neat trick. But its still a trick.

One of the central aims of legislation is to ensure that the law is unambiguous, and this often requires text to spell out the precise meaning. Otherwise the law is unclear, which leads to contests in court, and fat lawyers cheques.

So planning law will become vague as it becomes simpler. One example – the NPPF lists applications which would be ‘not inappropriate’ on Green Belt, and one of these is ‘engineering projects’. So what is an engineering project? I fear that they were thinking of one particular project, namely HS2 high speed rail  which will cross many acres of Green Belt, and will be challenged in the courts at every possibility, and the intention is to prevent that. But of course ‘engineering projects’ is simply undefined. For example, surely a nuclear power station is an engineering project? So NPPF would regard nuclear power stations as being appropriate for Green Belt?

Hands up if you’d vote for that.

The Government is desperate to be seem to be doing something to promote growth. The superficial rationale is that current planning arrangements lead to many refusals, and that this is hindering economic growth. Is  this true? Is it reasonable?

The recent Housing Market Analysis conducted for the National Housing Federation confirms that more houses need to be built. Projecting population growth and decrease in household size, to 2020, shows that a 1% growth is needed, but current house starts are roughly half this. So why are they not being built – is it because of planning permission refusals? No. A report by the LSE shows that housing land needs can be met by infill and brownfield, without touching green field. They are not being built because developers know they will not sell, because they are too expensive. This was the other point in the NHF survey – a decrease in home ownership. Housing is just too expensive. But increasing supply will not force down prices. Neither the Government nor house owners want that.

Of course many applications are refused. Developers can make much more money from green field build than brown field – and so can agricultural land owners. But there is no point increasing developers’ profits at the cost of urban sprawl, when this will not affect the housing shortage.
The chart above (click it for a bigger version)  shows inflation-adjusted GDP growth rate for the UK and the World (data from the World Bank). It shows a close correlation between the two, suggesting that UK growth reflects global changes. It also shows UK growth averaging around 3% since the 1970′s, and falling over the edge since the 2008 disaster. But planning laws were the same throughout this period. In other words  planning did not hinder growth in the past, and there is no reason to think it is doing so now.

But the NPPF does allow Grant Shapps and Greg Clarke to stand up in the Commons and say they are doing something to promote growth, and deflecting blame for the lack of growth onto CPRE and the National Trust.

The first is the Coventry Local Development Plan, with its Issues and Options Core Strategy, whch will be open for consultation from September 19. This will set the framework for planning application decisions up to 2020. There was a previous version of this, which got close to being adopted in May 2010, which would have allowed 33,500 new house builds, with many on green belt land. That version was developed under the Labour government regional housing targets, and under the local Conservative administration. But there was widespread strong opposition to it, and the current version is based on the premiss that there will be no building on the Green Belt, and the total build will be only 11,500. This was written under the local Labour administration, and has received some local Conservative support.. In other words, both parties have reversed their positions and will give people what they wanted.
The second event is the local Conservative party’s deselection of Councillor John Gazey as candidate for Bablake ward, much of which is Green Belt. Councillor Gazey favoured an increase in the Coventry population from 300 thousand to 400 thousand – an increase which was expected to happen as a consequence of building houses, people buying them and moving to the area, and then jobs somehow appearing for those people – a curious logic.  More rationally, Councillor Gazey and his family own considerable land in Bablake, and he has always declared this interest.
Councillor Gazey has said “There are some people in the local party who want a nice compliant solution. I am talking with people in the party nationally about the wisdom of their indirect influence.” The compliance he mentions is perhaps going along with what the electorate wants, which is always a wise move in a democracy.  I wish all the best for John Gazey. Hopefully the national party will support him and re-select him for Bablake ward.

There are two questions. Do we need to build more houses? And who will own them?

Firstly, do we need more houses? The report estimates that due to a rising population and falling average household size, the number of households will rise from 26 million in 2006 to 30 million in 2020. If you work that out its roughly 1% a year. The number of dwellings in England (only) in 2009 was 22 million. One per cent of that is 220 thousand. But the report shows that the number of new starts is only around 100 thousand a year. Therefore the number of new house building is only about half of what  is needed – unless the demographics alter. And this also ignores old house being demolished.

The second question is who will own them. The report forecasts house prices to continue to increase. This seems reasonable. If fact Shapps does not want to see house prices fall – it would be political suicide if they did. With supply continuing to fail to meet demand, they would rise. And since they already represent a very large fraction of the UK’s personal wealth, few would want to see them fall. So the number of people being able to buy there own house, or to save for a deposit in a reasonable length of time, will inevitably fall.

But someone will own those houses. Who?

The report shows a significant rise in buy to let mortgages in the 2nd quarter of 2011. This is consistent with the rest of the pattern. An increase in the number of people renting their house means there must be an increase in landlords doing the letting.

So what is actually at the heart of this report is another instance of the widening inequality in society. A small number of people are rich enough to own and let houses in addition to the one they live in. And a large number of people cannot afford other than to pay rent, to those rich people.

Maybe Thatcher won after all.

Media are suggesting the staff member has since been sacked. But Miranda Carter, HS2 Director of Consultation, is quoted as saying the person ‘will not be working on any more road shows.’

In fact HS2 are making a scapegoat out of their employee. The recording proves that several times the staff member went to check with senior staff. They did not emerge to be recorded, but she was obliged to convey their message that recording was not allowed. Surely they should take the blame, not the woman who has been berated?

But there is more to this. Do HS2 allow photos and recordings at Roadshow events? They haven’t said. Carter is quoted as saying ‘We’re here to provide clear and transparent information to members of the public.’  I suggest you test this. I suggest you attend a roadshow and voice an argument against HS2. I predict HS2 staff will offer counter-arguments. Obviously their information presentation is biassed in favour of the scheme. I also suggest you take a video recorder or similar and blog the proof.

1. The current HS2 Consultation Roadshow is not a consultation, it is a propaganda war.
2. The two sides in the propaganda war are hopelessly mismatched.

Check out the reality. The Roadshow was today in Balsall Common. At one end of the car park was HS2.  They had a main booth, another one to demo the noise it would make, 3 gazebos, a lorry full of leaflets, and lots of men in suits.

At the other end of the car park were the anti-HS2 people:

As you can see, they had a table and a few placards.

Inside the HS2 booths there was this panel:

Note the Department of Transport’s logo on the top right. So much for the government not yet having ‘made up its mind’.  The point is, there was no panel putting forward the case against HS2.

This was not a consultation – an attempt to find out what people wanted. If you spoke to a suit employed by HS2 criticising the plans, they did not make note of your comments – they argued against them. Obviously, since they work for HS2.

It was not a consultation. If it were, it would be conducted by an unbiased independent organisation, such as the Electoral Reform Society or an opinion poll company. Having the ‘consultation’ carried out by HS2 means, again obviously, that the process would be biased.  The wording of the questions on the consultation questionnaire has obvious biasses.

Of course the Department of Transport know this, and that in reality this is actually an attempt to persuade people that it won’t be too bad, and that its all for the good of the nation. The sad thing about that is the blatant unfairness of the process. At one end of the car park were the government – at the other, the people:

Do they look like they have an appropriate level of resource to promote their cause?

The only power those people have is through the ballot box. The Government should take note – people do not want HS2, and if they go ahead regardless, many Tory MPs will loose their seats. In particular, Caroline Spelman.

Its being suggested that this shows the Localism Bill to be a joke, in that the wishes of local people are being ignored. In fact this was signalled in November 2010 when the Bill was first published. The example DCLG gave at that time was High speed rail – local opposition would be over-ruled centrally.

So Pickles’ judgement flags two points. One is that the Big Society does not mean that – it means Small Government. But the Small Government will still ignore what people want.

The second point is about nuclear power. You are going to have it, and nuclear waste, whether you like it or not. So there is no point protesting.

But actually, there is.

In a phone coversation with Robert Penlington, he suggested that Coventry City Council were only concerned with planning aspects of this up to the City boundary, which runs across the site, and that beyond this, planning control was down to Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council. This is correct – crazy as it may sound, both local authorities considered planning permission separately.

Mr. Penlington referred me to a Mr. Alan Jarvis, a manager at Taylor Wimpey in charge of the development.  We discussed the tree issues. I referred to the Tree Retention and Protection Plan, which is on Coventry City Council planning portal site, here . This is dated October 2010. Mr Jarvis had an updated version dated March 2011. We discussed tree T26, which is shown as being retained on the October version. Mr. Jarvis explained that on the March version, it is shown as being cut down.

The problem is, planning permission was granted in Jan 2011, which must have been on teh basis of teh October survey.

Further discussion with Mr. Penlington reveals that he did attend a site visit in March, where trees on the Coventry half were discussed. He was then asked to withdraw. It appears that after this, the plan was changed and T26 was doomed.

Thisis a photo of part of the site taken by the TPO officer, probably in October 2010:

and this is what it is like now

That stump in the middle is probably T26.

N&B gave planning permission on April 4 2011. It looks like something happened on that site visit in March.