Potential Is Being Artificially Constrained, Indeed

Anything that takes power away from right-wing Labour municipal mafias in the pockets of property developers. In central and local government until 1979, the Conservatives used to take housing at least as seriously as anyone else did. But since 1997, even Labour in government has failed miserably on this issue.

We need a minimum of 100,000 new homes every year for at least 10 years, including council homes with an end to the Right to Buy, with the capital receipts from council house sales released in order to build more council housing, and with councils empowered to borrow to that end. We need a minimum of 50 per cent of any new development to be dedicated to affordable housing, with affordability defined as 50 per cent of average rents. We need rent controls. 

We need a statutory specification that planning permission would expire within three years, or possibly even two, if it had not been acted upon. We need action against the buying up of property by foreign investors in order to leave it empty. We need to repeal the Vagrancy Act. We need to outlaw practices such as “poor doors” and discrimination in children’s play facilities based on the nature of their parents’ tenure. 

And we need a statutory requirement of planning permission for change of use if it were proposed to turn a primary dwelling into a secondary dwelling, a working family home into a weekend or holiday home. That would set the pattern for the empowerment of the rural working class, assisted both by the Land Value Tax and by a windfall tax on the supermarkets in order to fund agriculture and small business, with strict regulation to ensure that the costs of this were not passed on to suppliers, workers, consumers, communities, or the environment.

The answers to points such as “there are no amenities” and “there is no public transport” are amenities and public transport. In 13 years as the central government and often many decades running the Council (the old mining areas cover vast rural areas of solidly Labour local government), Labour not only failed to deliver those facilities, but it has often actively dismantled them. Still reeling from the General Election result, the Labour Right must be wiped off the municipal map next year. In the meantime, contribute to this consultation here.