As the final week before summer recess hits Parliament, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid is preparing to announce striking new policy designed to ignite housebuilding across the country, forcing councils in wealthy areas to take affordability seriously.
Mr Javid proposals would enforce an automatic legal requirement on local authorities to calculate the local salary-to-house price ratio and base their housebuilding strategy accordingly. Where the ratio is too high, thousands more homes will be given the go ahead so that a significant increase in housing supply gradually brings down prices in desirable areas, enabling young professionals to own homes in areas they currently cannot afford.
Perhaps it was the return of so many Tory backbenchers during Parliament’s wind-down week that emboldened the Secretary of State to make such an announcement. After all, this policy is said to have been floating around Number 10 for over six months. The PM’s advisors are rumoured to have spent an eternity fretting over the back-bench revolt such an attack on the Tory-heartland leafy shires could potentially ignite-or perhaps I’m being cynical.
The policy would be designed to be indiscriminate across the country, bringing forward housebuilding in the richest communities previously protected by their wealthy NIMBY residents groups and Councillors. Of course, Mr Javid will still face this, fighting NIMBYism will likely be more difficult than ever before. At Curtin&Co we have found that influential resident groups can hold great sway over Councillors. Our programme of community canvassing looks to engage with the community and diffuse tensions between a local community and the developer.
Tipped as ‘one to watch’ for the top job by Katie Perrior at our annual House of Lords reception last week, Mr Javid’s drastic new policy follows his comments a few weeks ago that ‘where housing is particularly unaffordable, local leaders need to take a long, hard, honest look to see if they are planning for the right number of homes’.
Mr Javid’s desire to help first-time buyers get on the housing market, whilst also distancing the Tories from the little-Englander image so hated by young voters, could prove an inspired move in bringing young people back to a Conservative Party which polled just 23% of the under 40 vote at the last election. Just six months after Mr Javid was seen as out in the cold following the fall from grace of allies Osborne and Cameron, an ability to connect with young voters may see Mr Javid become ‘one to watch’ after all.