This week’s very interesting Panorama programme dealt with council housing and its “cheats & victims” – it also made brief mentions of the lack of new housing supply and a general housing crisis. Towards the end of the programme viewers saw meetings between those people hoping to get into social housing and the local authority’s housing officers. I’ve imagined a slightly different conversation that may occur between a family wanting to get into social housing and a councillor. “I need a council house because I can’t afford to buy a place or live in the private rented sector” “I’m afraid we don’t have any available” “Build some more” “We don’t actually build homes and we haven’t got any money to pay anyone else to build them for us” “Give builders planning permissions and increase land available for development to build homes and increase supply (and don’t load them up with red tape and indirect taxation that makes it too expensive to build the homes)” “There are no votes in that though, sorry” This is of course a brief conversation that does not go into the intricacies of the current housing crisis but it’s a simple snapshot of what surely is really the issue at heart in areas where nimbyism is ingrained (and that is certainly not everywhere). One point to recognise is that a final rejoinder from the family in housing need could be “you’ll get votes from us” but they’re often in the minority, or in a different ward, or the local authority simply believes it does need all that money from the developers and won’t let them just get on and put houses up. This latter aspect is an unspoken effect of the lack of house-building; hundreds of millions of pounds that went into infrastructure, education, social and affordable housing in return for simply granting planning permission is now nowhere to be seen... ---- And a Friday fact: Just 10% of England is developed Just 12% of the South East (excluding London) is developed The Green Belt is 13% of England
