Some big names have been taken down, for better or worse

Christopher Worrall is a housing columnist for LFF. He is on the Executive Committee of the Labour Housing Group, Co-Host of the Priced Out Podcast, and Chair of the Local Government and Housing Member Policy Group of the Fabian Society. 

The local elections are over and anti-housing Tories are on the ropes. Some big names have been taken down, for better or worse. One of the big hitters in housing to lose their seat was Conservative stalwart, Lord Gary Porter of Spalding, who led South Holland District Council for over 20 years.

His recent graceful departure was met with an honourable cross-party farewell on Twitter. Shame his own local MP, Sir John Hayes, didn’t seem to give two hoots, attacking the very council Lord Porter had led prior to the elections. What was the attack over I hear you ask? It was over, yes you guessed it, “overdevelopment”. This was regarding the 400 homes first phase of a Sustainable Urban Extension in South Holland District Council. Yet this fratricide appears to be no skin off Sir John Hayes’s nose, nor many of his Tory backbench colleagues, some of whom desperately seek to strawman overdevelopment as the reason as to why Conservatives lost over 1,000 council seats.

NIMBYism (Not in my Back Yard) has caused cracks to appear in Tory ranks. We have seen the start of this schism from recently leaked Whatsapp messages in the Tory party over housing. Concerns over becoming the party of NIMBYism is worrying those in marginals. This comes after Sunak scrapped housing targets following capitulation to a group of 100 NIMBY MPs led by Theresa Villiers. Conservative Party Chairman Greg Hands had tried to make hay over Labour’s announcement to reinstate the housing targets, before being brushed back by Mark Jenkinson, Simon Clarke, and Justin Tomlinson. All of whom challenged the NIMBY rhetoric, in at least what they thought was a private chat. Sadly for Greg Hands, himself an “overdevelopment” connoisseur, the debate over whether NIMBYism is damaging has only really just begun.

Yet for the patron saint of NIMBYism, Villiers, an outspoken critic against housing targets, is now facing a mess of her own making. In the Telegraph, Villiers was found calling to fightback over Labour’s housebuilding plans, holding a meeting recently to discuss how the Tories can appeal more to “NIMBY” voters. This will be difficult considering the schism found among her own party’s MPs, the fact an overwhelming majority of Brits believing it is “difficult” for young people in the UK to access housing, and that 71% of 2019 Conservative voters believing we need more social housing.

All of which will need to go somewhere, just not anywhere near where Theresa Villiers lives. She has for a long time argued against Barnet’s housing target being “too high to protect local character”, calling for targets to be “advisory only”.

I do wonder what character will be left when all the young people in Barnet can no longer afford to live where they grew up? If that isn’t already the case.

Nevertheless, all this Tory flapping has been brought on by a strident Keir Starmer, who has marched housing firmly up the agenda. In a recent interview with The Economist over ‘Defining Starmerism’, when it comes to confronting NIMBYism Sir Keir put on the record that “we have to take this on”, citing that “it will require tough decisions”. Mostly relating to the need for planning reform to enable housing, renewables, and economic growth.

Interestingly, despite the posturing in the Telegraph, Theresa Villiers is finding defending her party’s terrible record on housing difficult. Her recent Facebook post found her reeling against the BBC Today programme, following claims the Conservatives are failing to build new homes for young people. In the post, she made excuses for the proclaimed “compromise agreed between backbenchers and Michael Gove on the Levelling Up Bill”. She then proceeded to blame the election results in England on how much people care about “overdevelopment”.

Villiers is one of the arch-NIMBYs in the Tory party. She has regularly opposed plans to redevelop Chipping Barnet town centre from as far back as 2014, as well as more recently in 2023. Six storeys were found to be far too high for Villiers, she claims such height in the town centre could “greatly harm” it. She will be up against Dan Tomlinson, an economist at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation whose area of expertise has covered housing and jobs. He has publicly stated “Britain’s unacceptably high housing costs need tackling head-on”, stating this means “we need new homes with better infrastructure and truly affordable housing”. Housing the children of Chipping Barnet will no doubt be a doorstep topic at the next election.

Another scalp that was taken at the recent local elections was none other than former Swindon council leader and high NIMBY, David Renard. Swindon was a target seat for Labour, and one of their 5 pledges was “to get tough with developers”. Labour made a pledge to come up with a new plan so “that we get housing built where we want it and not elsewhere”. Nevertheless, whether this was thinly veiled NIMBYism or tickling the underbelly of anti-housing voters, is one for the history books to decide. What was important about this win was that David Renard, who was leader of the council since 2013 and Chair of the LGA, was vehemently opposed to planning reform. Renard is on the record claiming that planning being a barrier to housebuilding is a “damaging and misleading myth”.

Ironically, if anyone was being misleading it was the former Chair of the LGA. He often would cite the widely debunked statistic that there are over 1.1 million unbuilt homes with planning permission. Meanwhile, planning expert Matthew Spry of Lichfield’s once described this claim “the dodgiest statistic in planning”.  Perhaps the LGA can now get a Chair who is brave enough to cite the actual evidence on housing delivery going forward and recognise the facts that planning has been a leading cause of the UK’s 4.3 million missing homes.

Now the local elections are over many of the new Labour-led councils can focus on meeting the challenges the Conservatives have left them. Yet before we look towards the next general election we will no doubt see a flurry of policy proposals that seek to inform the next Labour government. It will be interesting to see if any focus on reforming how local councillors and MPs such as Villiers are an impediment to economic growth.

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