We Britons are conservative about our neighbourhoods, and rightly so. We take pride in them, wishing them to remain green and pleasant. The reason many planning reformers have failed in their efforts to build more homes is that they have struggled to comprehend this basic sentiment.
Given that residents of almost every area have experienced the horrible sight of an ugly, inappropriate development being erected near them, it’s easy to understand why people are so often sceptical of proposals for new developments. Many appreciate that the planning system, for all its failings, helps to preserve green fields and the skyline of their settlement.
The Government’s previous plans to replace the current structure with a zoning system or an algorithm was perceived by many to be an attempt to sideline locals. But Michael Gove’s recent endorsement of “Street Votes” suggests a significant shift in thinking.
It is among the most promising attempts to modify our planning system because it takes a bottom-up approach, aligning with the spirit of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission, inaugurated by the late James Brokenshire and co-chaired by the late Sir Roger Scruton and Nicholas Boys Smith.
The Commission recognised that locals object to new developments in large part because they are built in Ikea-style urban forms which rarely emulate the virtues of traditional streets and squares such as those in Bath, Edinburgh and York.
Instead of giving central planners more powers to ride roughshod over locals, therefore, Sir Roger Scruton urged the Government to put planning in the hands of residents. This is the essence of Street Votes, an idea which has been developed into a detailed policy by Dr Samuel Hughes and myself and has since been tirelessly championed in Parliament by John Penrose MP.
We propose that residents of a street should be able to agree by a high majority on new strict rules for designs to allow better use of their plots, perhaps by adding extra bedrooms or homes for children or older parents.
There are now twenty-six Conservative MPs openly supporting the proposal, including some who rebelled against last year’s planning reforms. The biggest boost yet came on Monday, when the relatively new Secretary of State for Housing, Michael Gove, said that he was going to “shamelessly pilfer” John Penrose’s private member’s bill for his own legislation.
Gove’s reputation as a man of action who finds new ways through old, complex problems, may go some way to explain why he finds Street Votes so attractive. It may not be a policy the Government has taken seriously to date, but it could potentially be a part of ending our long-term housing issues. It would, in the words of Steve Baker, give local communities the power to say “no”, but a reason to say “yes”.
We have tried the top-down model for decades, to little avail. Housing has become even more scarce in the places where it is most needed, and more and more people have been priced away from the best jobs, squeezed into smaller spaces, or forced to endure endless commutes.
Britain’s character as the first great property-owning democracies is being undermined as ever larger shares of younger generations come to believe they will never own a home. This is an opportunity to give them hope again.
Ben Southwood is a Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange and Head of Research at Create Streets
