Keir Starmer’s empty promise on housing comes as no surprise

Commitments to meet housing targets have long been part of political weaponry.

So it comes as no surprise that, with local elections approaching – an important real test of Labour’s electoral breakthrough – Keir Starmer is choosing to make access to property a problem.

Starmer says he wants to raise homeownership to 70 percent from the current 64 percent, where it’s been languishing for a decade.

To get there, says the Labor leader, 300,000 homes must be built a year. That is not an ambition that has been pulled out of the hat.

It’s a number that goes back to the turbulent days of the then Housing Secretary, Harold Macmillan, when the target was met.

That’s a significant increase on former Labor Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s 2007 ambition of building 240,000 a year by 2016 and matches the most recent Tory target of 300,000 a year, which was recently abandoned.

It’s all too easy for governments to make promises about housing, but the reality is that they control few of the levers.

The government of the 1950s managed to reach the magic number of 300,000 because the circumstances were so different.

During World War II, many cities were disfigured by German bombing and there was no shortage of inner-city locations.

Advances in construction techniques led to the birth of high-rise buildings: more homes for little money on smaller lots.

No one predicted the social horrors that would follow as the high-rises became notorious for socio-economic deprivation, crime and desperation.

That’s long before security became a factor at Grenfell Tower.

As real estate developer Gerald Ronson once told me, what people are after is a three-bedroom house with a yard, not a house in a tower block where maintenance can be a nightmare.

That’s the nice thing about it. Building such desirable homes requires more land and clashes with Britain’s strict planning laws and rampant ‘nimbyism’.

This is no less common in Labor-controlled boroughs than in Tories, although those boroughs may have a louder voice.

Leveling Up and Housing Minister Michael Gove has been honest enough to talk publicly about the pitfalls of target setting.

“The current supply-to-standard housing model is broken,” he stated in the foreword to a paper for the conservative think tank Bright Blue.

So how does Starmer propose to untangle the Gordian Knot? His main promise is to give municipalities more power to lift the planning blocks.

Maybe he should have talked to the builders before making this promise. The great financial crisis wiped out many of the smaller ones and concentrated power in the big five or six.

These companies have not made themselves popular. Fat cat pay checks for get-rich-quick merchants like Jeff Fairburn, the former Persimmon boss who built inferior and sometimes unsafe homes, have undermined confidence in their ability to deliver.

They, along with property developers, are also accused by Labor of storing up land to make speculative profits.

That may be so, but it’s not the real problem. That is up to the local authorities. With the exception of elected mayors in larger conurbations such as Manchester, the West Midlands, Teesside and elsewhere, there is very little effective planning.

The Council’s chief executives may be better paid than ever before, but their ability to plan ahead, clear sufficient sites and agree on infrastructure for new major projects, from education to housing and social care, is limited.

It is often argued that brownfields, abandoned factories, land close to train stations, former gasworks and even the redevelopment of high streets should be the answer.

You could, but the cleaning costs make such homes unaffordable and unappealing to anyone but boutique builders.

As for the city centres, John Lewis, Sainsbury’s and others have moved to this area and are building on and around shopping areas. But it is unlikely to produce the huge numbers that Labor or any other government would like to build.

There is one fact that must be challenged. It is often argued that Britain’s green and pleasant country is already over-cultivated and this is the argument used by Tory nimbies.

The reality is that even in England, the most populous part of the UK, 10.7 per cent of the landmass is considered developed.

The opportunity to provide decent and affordable housing is there. It is clear that more accessible mortgages for first-time buyers would help. But it is leadership, determination and planning from Whitehall and town halls in particular that are the missing link.