Tory areas given six times bigger increase in housing targets than Labour regions
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/31/tory-areas-six-times-bigger-increase-housing-targets-labour/
Posted by 1-randomonium
Tory areas given six times bigger increase in housing targets than Labour regions
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/31/tory-areas-six-times-bigger-increase-housing-targets-labour/
Posted by 1-randomonium
21 Comments
(Article)
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Tory councils have seen their house building targets increase by six times more than Labour ones, analysis by The Telegraph reveals.
On Tuesday Angela Rayner unveiled sweeping reforms to planning rules, including mandatory housing targets imposed on councils and a new algorithm to calculate them.
Analysis shows that, as a result, across the 55 Tory-controlled English councils which have planning powers, targets have been increased by 43.3 per cent.
Yet across the 121 council areas run by Labour, many of which are in the biggest cities, the upward revision has been just 7.2 per cent.
The changes mean that the number of new homes to be built in Conservative areas will go up by almost 23,500 – from 54,143 to 77,585.
In Labour-controlled areas, the new targets only add an extra 11,000 houses – increasing numbers from 152,499 to 163,413.
The dramatic difference is largely because Ms Rayner scrapped an urban uplift, introduced by the Tories, which allocated more housing to big cities.
Neil O’Brien, a Conservative MP and former levelling up minister, said the decision made no sense given that cities are where the highest demand is.
“They’ve made a decision to continue with incredibly high levels of migration into our cities and yet to reduce their housing targets and to move those housing numbers to shire areas,” he told The Telegraph.
“Clearly politics has won out over sensible policy making here and all the stuff about country before party has turned out to be just another lie.”
Analysis of official figures shows Cabinet ministers will only see half the number of new homes built in their seats compared with the shadow cabinet.
Sir Keir Starmer, David Lammy and Wes Streeting have had numbers in their areas slashed after London’s overhauled housing target was reduced by 20,000.
Almost half of the Cabinet – nine out of the 22 members who represent seats in England – have had their targets reduced.
In contrast, shadow cabinet members including Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt have been handed some of the biggest increases in the country.
Liberal Democrat-controlled councils have similarly seen their targets ramped up by 43.1 per cent while three Green Party areas have been handed a 56.7 per cent rise.
Ms Rayner was challenged about the fact she was putting more new homes in Tory areas.
She told the BBC: “The reason that their target will have gone up is because they are not meeting the needs locally and therefore that has to be met.
“The majority of places have had an uplift in their target because year-upon-year the Conservatives promised that they would build 300,000 homes and they failed to meet that target, year-upon-year.”
“That is why I have had to set the target at what it is and it is based on what the actual need is out there to solve this housing crisis.”
Ms Rayner also defended her decision to remove the requirement for all new houses to be “beautiful” from the planning rules after it was criticised by Kemi Badenoch.
“I don’t buy this idea that I’m just going to build a load of ugly houses – that’s just not true,” the Deputy Prime Minister said.
Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister, warned councils the Government will take control of their building plans if they do not come up with one by the end of the year.
His Greenwich constituency has had its target slashed by 41 per cent, and he said councils must “get those plans in place” to deliver 1.5 million new homes.
Why such a large disparity. I understand you want to help the most vulnerable areas (usually Tory) but this is too much
>The dramatic difference is largely because Ms Rayner scrapped an urban uplift, introduced by the Tories, which allocated more housing to big cities.
>Neil O’Brien, a Conservative MP and former levelling up minister, said the decision made no sense given that cities are where the highest demand is.
>“They’ve made a decision to continue with incredibly high levels of migration into our cities and yet to reduce their housing targets and to move those housing numbers to shire areas,” he told The Telegraph.
This is definitely a case of politics winning over sensible policymaking, but from the Tory side.
Urban areas are already heavily congested while the shires are sparsely populated(and getting depopulated over time due to the one-way movement of youngsters to the cities) with abundant land to spare for new housing.
The main reasons the Tories focused their housing targets in big cities were purely political: Their voters in the shires tend to be Nimbyists who oppose new housing construction, and additionally, they did not want to see an influx of younger, Labour-voting people in their safe seats.
>many of which are in the biggest cities
>The changes mean that the number of new homes to be built in Conservative areas will go up by almost 23,500 – from 54,143 to 77,585.
>In Labour-controlled areas, the new targets only add an extra 11,000 houses – increasing numbers from 152,499 to 163,413.
Ah yes, the old spin it with percentages lie of spinning news.
The percentage rise is lower in Labour councils because they are predominantly large towns and cities (who are already building houses) rather than the small town and village nature of Conservative areas (who block all housing development).
The actual split goes from 3:1 new homes (labour:conservative) to 2.1:1 new homes, which is just spreading the load.
>The dramatic difference is largely because Ms Rayner scrapped an urban uplift, introduced by the Tories, which allocated more housing to big cities.
Ah look the real reason – this is just reversing a Conservative decision to force most new building on Labour councils.
Shocker.
*Note:*
Now, to be fair, for small towns and villages, there’s a valid argument to be made for a complete lack on infrastructure (transport, health, schools, sewage, water, fire and police) – but in that case, the government needs to **mandate** that part of getting planning permission is building the facilities to be used by these services as part of building the new homes, as opposed to the current situation where building them is on the council / parish / some other cunt, rather than the people doubling the number of people living somewhere.
*Edit: Re-add quote blocks that vanished.*
“The changes mean that the number of new homes to be built in Conservative areas will go up by almost 23,500 – from 54,143 to 77,585.
In Labour-controlled areas, the new targets only add an extra 11,000 houses – increasing numbers from 152,499 to 163,413.”
Sounds like the Tories weren’t building enough in their areas then. Focusing development only in large cities will just add to congestion there and leave a lot of usable land undeveloped. Probably because they were scared of upsetting their NIMBY voters.
Make sure infrastructure and amenities are a required part of planning approval and get on with it.
Is that surprising? A lot of Labour regions are already highly populated urban areas, there is a limit to just how many more home you can build in Leeds Central or Manchester Withington.
By contrast, a lot of Tory areas are either sparsely populated rural places or suburban towns with much more available space.
Imagine. More house built in areas that aren’t already built up urban areas? Shocking, shocking I tell you….
Let me guess… More urban areas are Labour supporting, whereas more rural areas are Tory voting… i.e. more space and room for development in Tory areas. Not some big conspiracy!
Good.
They got all the levelling up money. Turntables are fair play, and all that.
It’d be nice to have more housing in rural areas, a lot of young people can’t just move to the city and still need housing. We’re incredibly short of it.
The worrying thing about this (other than the crazy politicising into football teams) is that there isn’t the employment opportunities in rural areas. Yes there is loads of space, but there is zero infrastructure, and the can’t afford it, won’t do it attitude isn’t going to deliver it.
People in the UK always fail to grasp that the worst poverty in the country is in our coastal towns and former mining communities. Building new neighbourhoods in these areas or the countryside without the investment that comes with place-making, water, amenities, OPPORTUNITIES.
Also people need to appreciate cultural clashes, moving people to urban hubs that are mostly diverse in the UK, rather than in communities where 80-90% of the community will never leave…. I wonder which provides fuel to the biggots.
If the UK had a proper self build culture with large numbers of dedicated plots provided by all councils a lot of this centralised planning nonsense would cease. People would be empowered to build the homes they want in the areas they want to live in.
Shoe on the other foot and its not as comfortablefor some. .. ironic considering the amount of money pulled from poor areas to more affluent by the now opposition.
Labour does not want northeners to own their own homes. The north is for mass compulsory state tenancy enforced via construction monopoly as per Leninist doctrine.
It may make sense or not to a neutral but frankly we’ve had 14 years of the Tories dumping on non-Tories so the Telegraph can do one
Can’t tell if this is a good idea or not. I live in Lancashire, Fylde, Wyre, Blackpool & Ribble Valley are higher on the list. I really hope they’re thinking this out and road links are in their plans. There aren’t very many job prospects for those living in those districts so unless it attracts more private companies to invest in their towns/cities and bring in some jobs, I don’t think it’s going to bring much positivity to those already living there.
Wyre has notoriously horrible roads, one of the biggest towns there (Fleetwood) doesn’t have a train station and the only route in is an A road that gets blocked beyond belief at busy times.
The headline is one *disengenuous* way to represent the data.
The targets in Labour seats are still **way** higher than in the Tory seats, and they have increased.
I’d love to post the bar chart from the article here, but I can’t. So please take a moment to look for it in the article. That graphical representation shows much better than the headline what is going on.
Probably not wise to be scrapping the ‘restoring your railway’ scheme whilst pushing housebuilding in areas with worse public transport.
It wouldn’t matter where the houses were being built if the infrastructure was developed accordingly! Building inside or outside of cities is ludicrous if the right developments don’t come with it! Part of the reason our rivers are so bad is because the local sewage can’t cope. Road maintenance in rural areas is at record lows. Water and electricity supplies are outdated and neglected. Hell, the number of areas where you can’t even get mobile signal is embarrassing for a first world country. We don’t just need more houses. We need the whole picture! Housing targets are a joke! Petty politics to placate the masses!
I mean they get built where it’s possible to build 🤷
This article is hilarious, it’s clickbait.
Yeah, housebuilding targets are I creasing more in tory run areas, mostly because their housebuilding targets were massively lower than elsewhere. Wonder how it ended up like that lol.
I suppose if labour normalise the central government funding to councils, they’ll whine their funding has not gone up nearly as much as Labour areas. Yeah, good reason for that.
What a joke.