Author Archives: Freddie Poser

It’s no secret that our party has a housing conundrum. On the one hand, the Liberal Democrats acknowledge that we’re in a housing crisis and that we need to build new homes to have a chance of making things better. On the other hand, one of our foundational tenets – local control – commits us to listening to communities about their vision for the future. At times these have found themselves in tension, and the internal debate has been pretty heated.

Everyone here is a liberal and fundamentally we all want the same thing: for people to have the best opportunity to control their own destiny. There is a policy proposal currently being considered by Parliament that might be able to forge a thoroughly liberal way forward: allowing local people to control the development of their communities and letting them take the lead on enabling additional homes. We’re a group of young liberals who think that this should be a part of a liberal planning policy.

The idea is called Street Votes, and at its core, it’s a very simple concept. Allow an individual street to decide, by a two-thirds majority, to share in the uplift from permitting new, walkable, sustainable development on their street. Residents create a proposal – a ‘street plan’ that comes with a strict set of rules governing what can and can’t be built. They then vote and, should it pass, residents can decide in their own time to go ahead with development on their own land individually or in groups, while sharing part of the land value uplift with the wider community. If you want more details check out this briefing paper from Create Streets.

What makes this so thoroughly liberal is that only the residents can approve the vote, so local control is protected, but everyone is incentivised to deliver additional homes. Research suggests that this could deliver thousands of new homes close to existing transport infrastructure by empowering locals: it’s a win-win. In Tel-Aviv a similar rule, TAMA 38, has led to a huge increase housing led by existing local residents. The Strong Suburbs proposal is even stronger because it actually requires landlords to share the benefits with tenants. The evidence from Israel is clear: this policy works. Everyone has an incentive to say yes to new housing in their back yard.