Why don't the social housing sector and housing campaigners support Green Belt reform?

Part of Britain's vital green belt

"During the 1930s most of Britain’s cities doubled their footprint by expanding into the countryside. After 1947 green belts stopped this sprawl, and concentrated the post-war housebuilding effort on existing cities and New Towns. Since then, green belt boundaries have constantly been reviewed and changed. The total area of green belt has doubled since 1997 to cover 13% of England, and a further 20% is protected in other ways such as national parks, while only 11% is classed as developed (half of which is parks and gardens)."

So states the preamble to housing campaign charity, Shelter's briefing on its policy in respect of Green Belts. The charity goes on to stress how useful and important green belts are - it points to how under the current system wicked dastardly developers tend to build "expensive, executive homes that make the highest returns" rather than the affordable homes that we need and how people might want to drive cars. Now, even if I leave aside that the folk buying those executive homes are moving out of a home somewhere else (do people at Shelter not understand the concept of a 'housing chain'), this conclusion fails to realise that the reason developers do this is also a consequence of green belt policies.

It is a source of disappointment that the social housing sector and charities like Shelter focus their efforts and lobbying on demands for huge dollops of taxpayers money to be used to subsidise the building of 'affordable' homes. Largely, of course, because the policies that mean at least 25% of England is barred from new development (and well over 50% in the places where people most want to live).

It gets worse if you head to the National Housing Federation, the representative body for the UK's social housing providers. Not only does their website fail to even mention planning as an area of policy concern but a search on their resources page, blogs and press releases reveals this:



Even a broader search on the subject 'planning' reveals some (not especially good) advice on getting planning permissions and a comment on the planning reform 'green paper' that doesn't mention substantive changes to any aspect of planning, just a preference for tinkering with rules on PDs, affordable housing allocations and the development control process. I may, of course, have missed something here but if the Nat Fed has a policy on planning reform and green belt, it's keeping very quiet about it. And hasn't said anything since October 2019.

Why is it that influential, well-resourced and active groups involved in housing campaigns and housing policy are so blind to the impact of urban containment on housing supply and housing affordability? Reading the Shelter position gives the impression that they prefer continued land supply constraint ("stopping sprawl" they call it) to actually meeting housing need through market mechanisms. And it starts with economically illiterate statements like this:

"...a blanket relaxation of green belt policy would allow far more piecemeal, unsustainable proposals to get planning permission – and would encourage developers and land traders to bid up the price of sites."

Yes folks, the experts at Shelter think that dramatically increasing the supply of land will result in higher land prices. Shelter go on to talk about 'windfall' profits from land and how this leaves no money for 'quality design' or infrastructure. As you've all worked out, the reverse is true - the windfall profits are largely the consequence of having an essentially arbitrary policy of limiting land supply to near (but not quite) zero in the places where housing demand is highest.

Like some centre-right lobby groups, Shelter want to continue having the state determine what land can and cannot be used for housing but to apply a punitive tax (backed up by compulsory purchse powers) to the value so as to pay for lots of supposed community goodies bundled under the heading infrastructure. Bear in mind that the developer isn't going to build without connection to actual infrastructure (gas, electricity, water, sewage, highways, broadband) so what Shelter mean by infrastructure isn't really infrastructure however much it might be socially valued.

Shelter's main argument (at least they have one unlike the wider social housing sector) appears to be a mix of that mealy-mouthed term, sustainability, and the inner urban snark word, 'sprawl'. In a blog post in 2015 Toby Lloyd, Sheter's policy guru, commented on how he sees it:

Fans of total planning deregulation tend to eulogise the 1930s – when we did build a lot of homes around cities. But would anyone really argue that our cities should double their footprint every ten years, as they did then? That only around 10% of England is urbanised is indeed a sign that a bit of greenfield loss would not be the end of the world. But it’s also a sign of the success of Green Belt policy in preventing infinite sprawl.

Again there's a silly polemic in here - 'infinite sprawl' - that reveals a lack of thought on the subject. Increasing England's urban area from 10% to 15% (including gardens, parks, playgrounds and assorted other open and public spaces) would not represent anything like infinity. Worse though, Lloyd and Shelter suffer an error of geometry - to double the land area doesn't double the radius. So extending London by 5 miles at its outer edge would provide for, even at the population densities in Bromley, around 4 million more people, and that's adding in an assumption there's a hidden homelessness right now of about 500,000.

And this also supposes that demand will be entirely met at the urban fringe with none of it on repurposing listed warehouses and old churches or by building swanky riverside apartments in the centre of town. It seems clear that the sort of value judgements made by defenders of urban containment (sprawl is bad, a 'free-for-all' favours developers, look at all those cars) are more important than the simpler truth that these policies make it too expensive for many to afford a home, let alone the manner in which the policy almost creates a new feudalism by debarring the urban workforce from property ownership.

I doubt anything will change, the housing sector is too wedded to demanding grant funding, but we need that change if we are to have a better housing policy and the chance of meeting the needs of millions in Britain - not just those wanting affordable rented accommodation but the millions who want the same societal deal their parents got - get educated, get a good job, work hard and, in return, get a real stake in the nation, a house they own. That the social housing sector takes such a narrow view - give us more cash, let's have more government - is at best a disappointment and at worst a missed opportunity to make the case that restrictive land supply policies like green belts are anti-poor and anti-equality ideas that should be scrapped.



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Garden Cities, new towns and the concreting of Kent

The shortlist for the Wolfson Economics Prize to build a new 'garden city' has been announced. There are five finalists some of whom have specified the location or possible location for the proposed new city. The most specific and, perhaps for this reason, the most prominent is that from housing charity, Shelter:

This entry proposes a new garden city on the Hoo Peninsula, Medway, Kent, starting with a settlement of up to 48,000 people - about the size of Welwyn Garden City at Stoke Harbour. This would be part of a larger cluster of settlements eventually totaling 150,000 people. The entry proposes a model designed to attract massive private investment into the provision of high quality homes, jobs, services and infrastructure. The delivery model prioritises speed and volume over profit margins, aims to acquire land at low cost and transfer valuable assets to a Community Trust for the long term. Local people would be offered shares in the city.

Now if you know the Hoo peninsula, you'll know that it has been the favoured location for every second mad-cap scheme - airports come especially to mind. Presumably - and this is the cynic in me speaking - this is because Hoo is far enough away from where all those bohemian fans of garden cities live but close enough to London to make building the 'garden city' viable. Indeed, the Shelter proposal includes a link to the High Speed railway (to a station that doesn't exist) so all those 150,000 people can be sped into the city for their day jobs.

And Shelter justifies this by being rude about Hoo:

 "A muddy, tidal estuary with poor transport links, a huge ugly power station dominating views, and few local facilities or job opportunities."

What Shelter doesn't mention is that the Hoo peninsula contains large tracts of protected salt marsh - some pretty special habitats in an important marine fringe corridor. Nor that the history of Hoo goes back to the 9th century and that the villages of the peninsula, far from being ugly or unpopular, are attractive and well-liked.

And all this would be on top of another enormous development at Ebbsfleet (between Dartford and Gravesend for those not so clear about North Kent geography). Along with other proposed developments in existing local plans, the south bank of the Thames estuary - from Dartford to Gillingham - would add perhaps 300,000 new residents all hugger-mugger to the HS1 route and living the sort of dormitory existence that is the antithesis of the 'garden city'. We get the suburbanisation of Kent rather than some rebirth of Ebenezer Howard's idea of Christaller-esque communal self-sufficiency.

It may well be that the idea of new towns - call them 'garden cities' if that yanks your chain - is the right way to respond to the continuing housing pressure in London (I still need to be convinced here - the experience of large cities is that people want to live near the centre is they can). But simply to point at one spot - declared 'ugly' and 'isolated' by the planners - is quite the wrong response albeit typical of Shelter.

Finally, we should remember that we cannot replicate Howard's vision because of the 1947 Town & Country Planning Act. When Howard was creating Letchworth, he could buy agricultural land at agricultural land prices and build on that land unconstrained by 'local development frameworks', 'spatial plans' or an enthusiastic local council planning department. And because he could buy the land cheaply, Howard's model could capture land value increase for communal benefit. However much you think this a wonderful idea (and I'm all for it myself), so long as the value is value as housing land, which it will be under our planning system, then capturing the added value for communal purposes is at best marginal and more likely of no significance at all.

The Shelter proposals are predicated on land purchase at low cost - I cannot see how, given the manner in which the planning system works, they can achieve this. Unless they're expecting to pay Hoo landowners less than the immediate, post-purchase value of the land. What we are seeing with these proposals - both the specifically-located one from Shelter and also other finalists - are schemes that require a significant relaxation of planning system constraints so as to make them workable. It's not going to happen is it?

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Shelter should be supporting the private rental sector not trying to regulate it to death

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In an egregious piece of research (in every sense of the word), Shelter claimed - more or less - that private landlords were killing children:

Shelter’s research, released today, based on a YouGov survey carried out in November last year of 4,327 adults in England living in the private rented sector, found 44 per cent of the respondents said their child would have a better childhood if they had a more stable home.

Well not quite killing children. And not even half of the respondents either. Indeed it is true that many people living in private rented property, just like many living in the social housing sector, would have wished for a more stable place to bring up the children. However, it simply does not justify the over-the-top comments from the big Shelter boss:

Shelter’s chief executive Campbell Robb said the findings of its report Growing up renting proved ‘that today’s volatile rental market is simply not fit for purpose’.

Now I don't wish to be boring here but what Shelter are doing (egged on by the Labour Party and local council leaders who really should know better) is mounting an attack on private landlords. The idea that private landlords would prefer to kick out a tenant after six months is arrant nonsense - the volatility is mostly down to the tenants not the landlords.

If these idiots from Shelter (and the Labour Party) get their national register of landlords - doubtless under the aegis of a new regulatory body, OfRent or whatever - the result will be to raise rents, reduce supply and exacerbate housing problems in places such as London. Instead of damning landlords with exaggerated claims of their evil nature, Mr Robb should be supporting the private rental sector, helping it to meet the complicated and varied needs of people needing housing.

But then that wouldn't get a headline, would it?

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Some tips on geodemographics for Shelter...

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Back in the days before the PC became ubiquitous, in a time when direct marketing was direct marketing, a new science arrived. It was called geodemographics and we (by which I mean planners in direct marketing agencies) were smitten, deeply smitten. This was the Eldorado of targeted marketing, the Shangri la of response advertising, the holy grail of direct mail. And we played with it – we created mailing lists by ‘profiling’ the electoral register, we segmented and targeted the big agglomerations of address data on the files of big finance and retail businesses and we linked the base geodemographics, the idea that ‘birds of a feather flock together’, to other information collected about customers.

And we learned a couple of important lessons really quickly (mostly through the principle of ‘test and learn’ that direct marketers, uniquely among the marketing breeds, apply to all their work):

1. Geodemographics, for all its wonderfulness is a pretty blunt targeting tool – yes it improves on the random selection from the population but only very slightly. Only where the profile indicated that a given place, typically a postcode area, was at least five times more likely to contain people with a given behaviour did we consider it worthy of selection. And that was for a door drop not for expensive direct mail – for that we needed ten times at least.
2.  For some products and services there simply wasn’t much evidence – beyond confirming existing income-based differences – of a significant variation from par to mean that the ACORN, MOSAIC or Superprofiles analysis. Too often I tore open with rising excitement the envelope containing the profile for a client only to see a flat profile of mostly academic value. To make things work for the client we turned back to old fashioned techniques – using known responders, previous customers and incentivised two-stage campaigns to get new buyers.

So I smile when I see the latest super clever system – using ACORN, MOSAIC or some other geodemographic profiling system as a tool for marketing, communications or even ‘activism’. And the smile is a little wan since these approaches are misleading (to say the least) and of little real value. Here’s an example from housing charity, Shelter:

The Shelter Housing Insights for Communities resource is a must-have for anyone involved in community consultation on housing development. Built using ACORN and extensive bespoke national surveys on housing attitudes, this resource is a unique insight into the housing views and aspirations of local communities; providing advice on cost-effective and targeted consultation.

Using this system you can pop in a postcode and it will tell you whether the local folk are (or maybe aren’t) NIMBYs or BANANAs. Or at least you can at the “ward level” – a level that, in Bradford, is about as much use for getting any understanding as the proverbial chocolate fireguard. I can get a postcode assessment – mine is 3I33 (comfortably off settled suburbia, middle income couples) – but have to track back into Shelter's national assessment to make any sense at all of the information.

And then we learn the bleedin’ obvious – people who live in poor housing especially in cities are supportive of new housing development whereas folk living in suburbia (and especially the wealthier bits of that suburbia) are more likely to oppose housing development. Well knock me over with a feather, that’s some insight!

Here in Cullingworth – which is shaded a deep red for ‘we don’t like housing development’ – the truth is more nuanced and won’t be helped by the patronising ‘communications planning’ that Shelter propose.  What we don’t want – and will die in a ditch to stop – is the sort of massive development that will change the entire nature of the place. But the development of a few houses here or there we can live with – yes we want sensitivity, we don’t like fine old houses being knocked down to make way for ‘ticky-tacky’ houses and we’d like the developer to pay attention to traffic issues and road safety.

Yet Shelter – armed with their geodemographics and an opinion survey – want to cast us as unbending NIMBYs. Not only are they wrong, they are misleading developers and undermining the real efforts of councils, planners and local communities to meet housing needs without destroying the nature of a place. Plus of course – as we found out 20 years ago – geodemographics, even supplemented with other data, is a pretty blunt instrument for marketing. A lesson Shelter (who probably didn’t talk to any direct marketers in creating their whizzo system) still needs to learn.

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