I have a proposal on how to permanently solve the UK’s housing crisis, forever.
This proposition rests on two arguments:
- Unlike all of history, our population is not going to continue to grow. The ONS forecasts that the population of the UK will peak in the early 2040’s at 71m.
- It follows that the number of homes needed will similarly peak.
For maximum economic benefits and happiness, we want these homes to be built where people want to live and work. This is predominantly in the south east, where planning permission is constrained by the Green belt.
My proposal is that we build on the Green belt.
The old fear: it’s a slippery slope – grant planning permission for an inch and they will concrete over miles, until all the beauty is gone.
However, if we accept that peak housing is within our sight, we can slough off this fear, like a hermit crab, and confidently scuttle into our final and forever shell.
But how much of the Green belt would need to be built on? Worst case: assuming 100% of the homes are wanted in the southeast, ignoring the 100k’s of new homes already in the pipeline, assuming people continue in wanting to live in ever smaller households (2.3 by 2040) and that we decide we want roomier houses and gardens than the legislation currently allows (15 per hectare vs 30). We would need 2,200,000 homes. Rounding up the worse case, that would require building on 10% of the Green belt. Worst case.
You would of course prioritise Green belt that is of the lowest greenery, intensive farmland, and build near existing transport hubs. Nearly half of our worst-case-absolutely -wouldn’t-be-needed 10% is within a half mile/10 minute walking distance of a railway station.
That said, a decimation, no matter if never to be repeated, is still a bitter pill to swallow.
So we should sweeten this medicine by:
- Exchanging each and every hectare built over for a new hectare added to the green belt, to maintain its current size (1.62 million hectares). Prioritising real greenery. Not intensive farm land.
- For good measure, add a 150,000 hectares, the total we are building on, to our national parks and areas of natural beauty.
- Plant 71 million trees in national forests across the UK to celebrate peak Britain.
All the homes we will ever need, plus more protected greenery than ever before.
This is an honest and transparent proposal which could banish the housing crisis, painful cause of so much of our cost of living woes and stagnant economy, forever.
Shed our old fears. Embrace peak Britain. Move into our forever homes.
* Freddie Jewitt is a Lib Dem member in East Herts.
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35 Comments
“For maximum economic benefits and happiness, we want these homes to be built where people want to live and work. This is predominantly in the south east, where planning permission is constrained by the Green belt.”
People usually have to live reasonably close to where they work. It doesn’t much matter whether or not they “want to live” there.
So the question of where jobs are distributed, and the relative pay levels of those jobs in the country does need to be addressed.
It doesn’t make any sense for everyone to be economically incentivised to move to the SE of England. The job of central government is to use its fiscal powers to ensure that the economies of the regions are equalised as far as possible. If there are spare resources in the regions government spending can be used to utilise them without causing inflation. Similar spending in the SE will cause inflation in wages and the housing market.
The building companies won’t build if they can’t profit. Social housing built by local councils and end right-to-buy – or maybe limit it to after 25 years residence.
Freddie – in case you hadn’t noticed, one of the main environmental issues we face is repeated flooding. And the more ‘green’ (i.e. not already built on) land we cover over with concrete the less there will be for flood water to drain away. Which would make the problem worse.
Flooding is a serious problem and people are finding it more and more difficult to get property insurance which covers flooding. Someone from the Bedford area whose house was flooded recently and who had no flood insurance was interviewed on TV.
Builders and developers will always prefer to build on greenfield sites, whether they are Greenbelt or not, as the houses often sell for more and also cost less to build than on brownfield sites, which may require decontamination or are in less leafy locations. The more Greenbelt that is built on, the fewer developments that we will see on the many sites with existing planning consent, but not yet developed. Many Greenbelt sites where I live (Edinburgh) are irreplaceable, and if built on will be lost forever.
@Jenny – agree with you on all yours points there but don’t think this proposal causes a profit problem for the developers – it makes the cost of land cheaper for them.
@Nonconfirmist: I understand and agree we shouldn’t build where flood risk outweighs benefit. But I think we can find 10% of the green belt that won’t flood. And bearing in mind green belt is ~2% of UK landmass I don’t think this policy would increase UK flooding risk, indeed planting 71 million trees and extending protected areas would reduce it.
@Peter – as I say in the article, I don’t think worst case is likely, i.e that 100% of people will want to live in the SE. That said I think the green belt disincentivises people who do want to live here but cannot afford it. I’m all for incentives for regional development, I don’t think you need disincentives elsewhere to achieve that.
@John I understand the dynamic you highlight which is why I present the worst case view, 100% green belt development. However, I don’t think it likely that existing brownfield development would stop.
Do you think, at worst, building over 10% of green belt, which is then replaced and expanded protected areas elsewhere, is on balance an acceptable trade to solve the housing crisis?
Nice to see a suggestion for resolving the housing crisis. But I fear a flaw in this proposal is the implicit assumption that lack of building land is the main bottleneck preventing more housebuilding. I can believe it’s a factor, but what about availability of trained builders and architects etc.? Difficulty in getting planning permission? I would imagine that even if you supplied unlimited land, those other bottlenecks would need to be solved.
The Adam Smith Institute’s claim that you referred to is that “simply removing restrictions on land 10 minutes’ walk of a railway station would allow the development of 1 million more homes within the Green Belt surrounding London alone“. That seems highly implausible to me, so I’d like to see the original source of that claim.
Also, the SouthEast is far too big an area to treat as a single entity for where people want to live. For example, Southampton and Margate are both in the SouthEast, but I doubt anyone looking to buy a house close to their place of work would see them as interchangeable options!
I’m also sceptical of the ONS’s claim of UK population levelling off. Population increase recently has mostly been driven by immigration, the size of which is largely determined by political decisions that are by their nature impossible to predict.
One thing that it’s important to bear in mind with discussions about green belts, is that they doesn’t exist to protect nature, it’s just a policy of not building on the land that happens to surround a city.
The only designations that are intended to protect nature (i.e habitats and wildlife) are sites of special scientific interest and European designations (SACs/SPAs). None of these are a political priority these days; irrespective of how many hundreds of sites meet the qualifying criteria or how many existing ones could be extended, the government only provides the resource to designate a very tiny amount of new ones.
AONBs and national parks do play some role but largely indirectly, as they mainly exist for the visual landscape and promoting public access.
Thanks Simon.
I disagree re: the bottlenecks (planning permission on the green belt is what I am talking about, not a lack of land, you can use standard design toolkits to reduce architectural needs, mass manufacture high quality pre-fab housing reduces labour requirements) but even if I didn’t – they are all soluble, especially if you can provide businesses some certainty through that they can profitably invest to solve them. And all processes have a bottleneck somewhere, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to remove the current one.
I concede the point you are making about size of the SE and knowing where exactly people want to be. But I think the solution here is not to centrally plan which 10% is built on but react to demand.
I’ll try and dig out the source from the ASI and check whether ONS has considered migration flows (I believe they have). However, you are right that this is a complex system and making changes to one part will change the outcomes. We should adjust for this risk by having some humility in approach.
@Freddie
“But I think we can find 10% of the green belt that won’t flood. ”
Evidence please.
Don’t touch green belt unless it’s already been degraded.
“But I think the solution here is not to centrally plan which 10% is built on but react to demand.”
Whose demand? People with good reason to want to live there? Or the developers?
@noncomformist – I don’t have it but I doubt you have evidence otherwise so let’s assume if made law flood the risk assessment would be done. Would you support it then?
Re: developer demand vs the people – obviously the people. I would argue the current constraints on green belt compound this conflict between the two, as developers take what they can get from the planners rather than give people what they want.
@Freddie
You’re the one pushing for building anywhere on green belt land.
If it’s grey belt i.e. there’s already been some building on it – that’s OK. But if there’s nothing built there leave it alone.
I notice that to the north, west and south-west of where you stood for election in 2023 the government’s flood warnings & alerts map is festooned with warnings and alerts today.
“And bearing in mind green belt is ~2% of UK landmass I don’t think this policy would increase UK flooding risk”
It isn’t a question of the UK overall. It’s about where one can build safely.
Flood-damaged properties can be extremely expensive to repair and once flood-damaged they lose their value – who wants to buy a house in an area with a history of flooding?
Insurers and the goverment (you and I as taxpayers) are already having to fund flood cover for properties which fall into the Flood Re scheme – but this won’t cover new properties.
Freddie – “Do you think, at worst, building over 10% of green belt, which is then replaced and expanded protected areas elsewhere, is on balance an acceptable trade to solve the housing crisis?” The basic flaw in your argument is saying that building on 10% of Green Belt land will solve the housing crisis. I don’t think it will. There are many other factors, apart from the availability of land that contribute to the housing problems for many people, including the availability of suitable reasonably priced rental property, where there are many empty council properties unsuitable for occupation, the deliberate shortage of new housing in some areas, which maintains higher prices than necessary, lack of affordable finance, job insecurity of borrowers, shortage of skilled workers in the building trade and much more.
Need to make sure your starting assumptions are correct. A couple of examples. One impact on the demand for housing has been the increasing numbers of people choosing to live alone hence creating more single-person households. Even if the overall population peaks the demand for numbers of houses may not. Another issue is where people choose to live. Where an older and retired population wishes or can be persuaded to live is different from a younger population looking for jobs. Perhaps needs a bit more nuance in the analysis before reaching for “obvious” policy solutions?
Thanks Freddie for generating a big and bold idea which certainly cuts through even as it generates debate! We do need to think radically with respect to housing as the problem is so deeply entrenched.
As I think is generally recognised, the current lack of affordable housing is a huge source of inequality in the UK. Younger people paying rent line the pockets of those with enough property wealth already. A perverse redistribution of wealth.
I especially appreciate Freddie’s thinking around a pledge to couple any development of greenfield with expansions of national parks and tree planting. That’s a sound principle that could be mapped onto lots of other related policies. I might also suggest efforts to enhance wildlife corridors and the blue corridors identified in the 2024 manifesto. We can establish a general policy principle that development should never have a net detriment to biodiversity.
Freddie, Your “All the homes we will ever need – a permanent fix for the housing crisis” is an example of H.L. Mencken’s, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”..
For a start much of the infrastructure, sewage, roads, schools, transport, water, hospitals, etc., in the S.E. is already ‘creaking’; an influx, even on a tenth of the scale you are proposing, would cause a complete breakdown..
It’s not just jobs attracting people; people will attract jobs to the detriment of everywhere else..
I’ll leave it to others to expand further on the problems..
I’m amazed by the number of responses that take the OP as an absolutely literal blueprint for housing rather than a thought provoking illustration.
If we take the original post, as an entirely hypothetical argument, rather than a serious proposition, it implies that thr housing crisis has been grown and sustained out of political choices.
The deeper point of the OP is that, there is still plenty of land.
If government policy had been more helpful over the course of the century, we would not have a housing crisis in exchange for building on relatively small areas of land.
Why hasn’t this happened? Because inequalities allow those with more to profit from those who have less.
Landowners, Landlords, and Housebuilding have had their interests protected for decades under the guise of “national parks”, “green belt”, “AONB” etc.
Meanwhile rental costs keep the poor poor, keep society divided, gives the middle class the havenots to fear, and reason be thankful for government and police, and private schools, etc.
Also, it keeps middle-class families as mortgage slaves, ensuring that they don’t have spare money or time to invest in themselves, energy independence, the arts, the community, etc.
As Liberals we should be able to see-through the simple dimmer-switch politics of the left/right spectrum.
If we can’t be radical on housing (let alone all the other policy areas), what is the point of having 72 MPs?
Very unpopular in many of the ‘new’ LD seats.
Not the right answer.
Build up with quality flats. Fully insulated of course.
Incentivise single occupants to move to the new flats. Make 2/3 bedroom flats.
All on top of more ‘affordable’ housing bulit by LA’s s in the 30’s and 40’s but immigration to provide for our care may put the date of peak population back by decades as the carers stay and have families. End the right to buy and until then sale monies to be used by LA’s to build more Council Homes. Promote Community Land Trusts to build too.
@David Garlick re posting 30th Sep ’24 – 12:31pm
How practicable might it be to convert existing under-occupied 2-storey houses (as they become available) into upstairs and downstairs flats?
Maybe with the upstairs ones targeted at younger fully mobile people and the ground floor ones at people who are elderly or have mobility problems?
>”The ONS forecasts that the population of the UK will peak in the early 2040’s at 71m.”
Haa Haa!
Been here before: in the mid 1990’s the UK population was starting to flatline, with a birth rate falling below replacement.
What was the response? we need more people to keep growing the economy, to care for all the old people… Hence why have had since then and will experience population growth that, according to ONS, is attributable to changes in migration ie. a problem Westminster created by a daft response to events.
Remember ONS is only showing the trend if we do NOTHING. there is no real reason why the population shouldn’t be a more sustainable 35m (*) in 2040, if we desire it.
So the issue isn’t so much build yet more houses, but to grasp the population challenge with both hands.
(*) Although some sources eg. Population Matters, puts the number between 20~30M.
>we want these homes to be built where people want to live and work
Bulldoze London and rebuild at the same density as Paris (Paris is roughly twice as densely populated as London), problem solved. Yes, a solution is building high density urban housing, which means tower blocks, communal hall style accommodation (in a 15 minute city, does every home actually need a full bathroom, kitchen, utility etc.? my flat in Tokyo in the early 1990s didn’t, I just walked outside my front door and walked a few yards down the road.)
@John – I don’t discount those as facotrs but they are solvable. I think this specific issue is the key that unlocks the path.
@Chris – Thanks for comment Chris – I did include an assumption that household sizes will continue to decrease from current 2.4 to 2.3.
@John – Thanks John, I appreciate the kind words. I agree with you re: inequality – the green belt is a garrotte for the young and less wealthy.
@expats – Love the quote. Is there never a simple solution for complex problems then? Is it not intuitive that the answer to a lack of houses is to build more houses? The complexity here is the politics. Needless to say I disgree, we can build infrastructure and see the proposal to focus on making the most on what is already there. We just need to make it legal to build! Re: a breakdown from even a 10th of what I am proposing…. The reality is we are going to have more than 220k homes built in the SE over the next 20 years so let’s make the difficult political decision and manage it proactively.
@Matthew – Thanks Matthew, what a joy to be comprehended. You are bang on in your analysis of the bigger picture.
@David – agree with all the policy detail you are saying, which is why I am sure the worst case isn’t necessary. Agree with you re: political popularity – so probably not one to campaign on but certainly something I would like in the manifesto.
@Nonconformist. All I can say is, again, I agree we shouldn’t build homes that flood/cause more flooding. But more homes are needed and floods already happen without green belt development, so the critical importance is where the homes are built, not whether they are green/grey/brown belt.
It might be politically difficult to end Right – to – Buy for existing council housing, but it would be relatively acceptable for it to no longer apply to anything newly built from now on. If so, councils would be able to borrow to build secured against the rents for at least 25 years. And, even better, councils would be much better able, as democratically elected bodies, to consider the infrastructure needs of any such building to avoid building car-dependent dormitories.
Alternatively we could take action on empty homes, second homes and short term holiday lets, using ‘nudge’ penalties for owners, plus compulsory purchase of sites that have planning permission but have been land-banked rather than built out and the problem is solved, and could be achieved within this parliament.
@Jenny Barnes – “It might be politically difficult to end Right – to – Buy for existing council housing”
The right-to-buy only needs to apply to existing tenancy agreements, new agreement, new Ts&Cs….
@Catherine – I see those as complimentary measures. I don’t think alone they solve the challenge. Even including second homes and short term holiday lets (which I reluctant to outlaw) this only adds ~1m homes and I would expect the majority are in holiday destinations. https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/
@Roland – The ONS forecast has net migration as an input. But yes, the assumptions/forecast will fluctuate based on other policies – it’s a complex system after all.
As far as I can see the ONS predicts continued growth of 0.3mill per year through 2046…
See figure 1 in:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2021basedinterim
I too like the sound of investing more in AONB and other defined nature reserves in exchange for some arbitrary green belt land.
Well, I always thought Lib Dems were relatively open-minded, but here we have proof that the reverse could be true. We have a forward-looking attempt from Freddie to find a way forward on housing and all we hear is negative thinking and objections on all sides. What a pity.
What we need, it seems to me, is to consider such proposals as possibilities. Condemning them will get us nowhere.
@Catherine Royce “compulsory purchase of sites that have planning permission but have been land-banked” – wouldn’t that simply cause anyone intending to land-bank to just not bother applying for planning permission in the first place? Also, how many of these sites have only outline planning permission, but not the full planning permission that’s necessary to start building (and which might be difficult or take a lot of expensive work to obtain even if you already have outline planning permission)? Would seem a bit harsh to compulsorily purchase a site because the owner hasn’t built on it when the owner isn’t actually (yet) allowed to build on it!
The Centre for Cities records a deficit of 4.6m already (https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/), and as an earlier comment noted, our population is expected to grow by 7m… https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-long-run-with-projections?country=~GBR
Although I agree with you that we need to build on parts of the Green Belt, I can’t see the evidence base for saying that we only need 2.2m net new homes in total, ever.
@Steve N and @Tim L – you are both right re: the data. I’m sorry to say it seems my source is dodgy. Like Kuenssberg, this is embarrassing and disappointing. This does change the fundamental proposition, but there are valuable elements that should not be discarded.
A fine answer @Freddie – good to see someone being so open to feedback. Look forward to reading more of your thinking.
At the risk of sounding incredible, shouldn’t we also be looking at introducing measures to incentivise downsizing when that is appropriate? Has anyone made an estimate of how many houses or flats this would create if done on a sizable scale? Exchanging your property for a more livable one would free up some disposable income while not reducing inheritance unduly if it was combined with a reduction of that tax.
@Peter Hirst
Maybe – however, please do not consider appropriate house sizes in isolation from other factors. Such as lone older people having lived in a community for many years – do not expect them to uproot themselves and move to where they know no-one.
On the other hand lone older people might have a room to spare for a lodger – provided the lodger can be trusted. And maybe a lodger could help a less than fully mobile person with shopping etc.