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.
One of the problems with our current approach to home building is that it pits locals against development. The benefits of new homes are very diffuse: we all gain from a less-severe housing crisis, whilst the perceived costs are highly concentrated, burdening the existing residents. Residents currently gain nothing from saying yes to new homes so it’s no wonder when they object. Instead of coming up with increasingly top-down ways to deliver housing, why not try bringing locals along with us as we solve the housing crisis.
In 1980 Bernard Greaves and Gordon Lishman set out “Community Politics” as a radical, liberal way of engaging people at the level that matters most to them: the community. We can see this idea run through almost every strand of Lib Dem thinking today: that groups should make their own decisions and be able to control their own destiny. Street Votes is in many ways the ultimate expression of this longstanding liberal tradition. No one can impose a street vote on a neighbourhood and no one can force them to say “yes”. The proposal allows individual communities to decide what’s best for them.
We’re not the only liberals who think this could be the way forward. Baroness Thornhill said “I am genuinely excited by a radically new approach to get residents to go from being BANANAS (“build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody”) to YIMBYs” whilst Lord Taylor has said that street votes are “a profoundly important idea that could have a key role to play in addressing both the housing shortage and creating more sustainable and attractive communities”. The plan is also endorsed by the most recent president of RIBA, social housing professionals, councillors and campaigners. It’s our best chance to break the housing deadlock.
Street vote trials will be coming to Parliament soon. We hope that the Liberal Democrats can take a leading position, working cross-party to make sure this radically liberal approach to solving the housing crisis becomes a reality.
Signed:
- Joshan Parmar – Chair, Cambridge University Liberal Association
- Leena Sarah Farhat – Diversity Officer, Welsh Liberal Democrats
- Callum Robertson – PPC for Clacton and former parliamentary candidate
- Emma Munday – Treasurer, Cambridge University Liberal Association
- Henry Wright – Chair, Berkshire Young Liberals
- Guy Benson
- Freddie Poser
- Henry Compson
* Freddie Poser is a former chair of Cambridge University Liberal Assosciation.
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12 Comments
Tim Leunig at the LSE proposed something similar in the form of Community Land Auctions back in 2011
“Community land auctions are akin to competitive tendering. The local authority invites offers of land, and accepts those that are good value. Good value is a combination of price and appropriateness for development, where the latter incorporates both sustainability criteria, as well as desirability for the final purchaser. The council grants planning permission, and then re-auctions the land that it accepted for development, keeping the difference in value.£
“There is lots of land in Britain that could be developed, and local authorities want to see only small amounts developed. Lots of potential sellers mean that prices of land that the local authority accepts are likely to be low. Equally, when the local authority comes to sell the land to developers it is the only seller, and there are many potential purchasers. This means that it will receive a full price for the land. Using figures supplied by a major volume housebuilder, and confirmed in conversation with two other housing insiders, we estimate that councils in the greater south east would typically receive around £45,000 per house built. This is a dramatically greater incentive than local authorities have had before, and makes it much more likely that communities and local authorities will support, rather than oppose, development.”
What’s the difference between allowing communities street votes on developments and Liz Trusses proposal to allow communities to vote on fracking for gas which I believe the Liberal Democrats oppose?
Actually the “Community Politics” approach goes back much earlier than 1980 – to the later 1960s, in fact. Young Liberals – and many others within the Liberal Party (including Bernard Greaves and Gordon Lishman, whom you name) were campaigning on the philosophy from before 1970! But you do have two major problems with these proposals to create “Street Power”. Firstly, not everyone lives in a street! In rural areas there are many isolated houses, and hamlets of just a few houses. Please factor this into your proposals. The second problem is easily defined – it’s called the NIMBY mentality. Sadly many people will support the idea in principal, but not when it affects their street or local community. And there are enough of these (running into millions) to veto any proposals for extra housing to be built within eyesight of their own home. May I also suggest an additional plank to your thought? Throughout the country there are hundreds of thousands of empty properties – in rural as well as urban areas. If these – if left unoccupied for over a year or so without a valid reason – were taken into public ownership (local authority and housing associations) by appropriation, the housing crisis could be drastically reduced.
The problem with planning is that like asking Turkeys to vote for Christmas everybody wants development, but nobody wants it next to them.
A key factor in the success of Sarah Green in Chesham & Amersham was said to be the Nimby factor especially amongst Tory switchers. They didn’t want HS2 and they didn’t want Buckinghamshire Council building 1000s of homes next to them.
I’m afraid this is one where reality hits against Liberal ideology, we need to look at this as the conjoining of levelling up, redistribution and town planning, in the same way we cannot keep building motorway lanes to stop traffic, we can’t keep building houses in the South East.
This is why a macro approach to planning has to be taken, building infrastructure in the North, moving government departments out of whitehall and into the midlands, we can’t allow local Turkeys to vote against Christmas
Whether my thoughts are pertinent to this article or not I am unsure, but throughout my life I have been angered by the power of the developers to dictate where and what they build ahead of local needs, probably through the time honoured method of donations to political party funds, allowing them to maximise their profits at the expense of the local population and environment, proper local planning would, hopefully, go a long way to solving this problem?
@Chris Bowser “building infrastructure in the North, moving government departments out of whitehall and into the midlands”
I completely agree with your post, especially your last sentence.
“Found themselves in tension” (in the article) seems to be putting very mildly the apparent contradiction between the Lib Dem’s national statements and its local campaigns, Chesham & Amersham being a notable example where activists poured into the constituency to campaign against the party’s own policy on HS2!
This is a welcome attempt, as is that which Joe mentions, to think radically and hope to solve the broken planning system which so often neither provides the housing needed nor satisfies existing residents. As Barry says, it is the developers who benefit most and successive governments have been taken in by their lobbying to say that local planning authorities get in the way of their plans to build good (i.e. luxury) homes and make big profits (as assessed by each individual development not the overall operation of the company).
Whether street votes is the answer I am not convinced, unless there is a strong element of strategic planning within which such voting must operate. In any case it is surely more than just where and how much housing and work places to build; a proper planning system would take more account of infrastructure over the wider area, local facilities of all kinds and proper sustainability. The latter is very weak at the moment; one large development in our area on the edge of a village (although opposed by our planning committee) went ahead on appeal and it was claimed to be sustainable, because the village had an hourly daytime bus service. That was in spite of it having no doctors surgery, no places of significant new employment anywhere near, only one shop and a very busy accident prone main road going right through the centre where people walk. The bus service has now reduced to 3 per day.
Nigel Jones highlighted exactly what I meant by proper local planning.
There are1.272 second homes in my district – Teignbridge (there are over 11000 second homes in Devon)
Teignbridge has around 1,000 applicants on the housing list across the district.
Additionally, planning permission exists for around 8,000 new homes in Teignbridge… but not yet built by the developers and others who hold the permissions!
It seems we don’t have a housing crisis in Devon, so much as a greed crisis.
(The information from Devon County Council following a question by my colleague Cllr Julian Brazil, leader of the Liberal group).
The only time we get anyone from the local community to our parish council meetings is when there is a housing development in the offing. And do you think they come to register their unconditional support for the plans ? No.
A street vote will simply prevent housing being built in vast swathes of our country. Its all very democratic but Brexit showed us that democracy can be a two edged sword.
@Chris Cory
As a matter of interest – does your patch have a neighbourhood plan?
One thing you have overlooked is the power of the secretary of state or chancellor to intervene on local decision making. Localism and the ability of communities to agree a local or neighborhood plan or refuse a planning application not in line with local decisions is frequently overturned on appeal at considerable cost to the LPA and Council.
Indeed, under the Conservatives power has become more not less centralized.