An example of thoroughly missing the point

Bob Seeley, who is apparently a Conservative MP, demonstrates how easy it is to thoroughly miss the point. He’s talking about the planning system and how it must not be changed to allow anything to be built anywhere near any of his constituents. We think we’ve got that nub of the argument correct there:

Second, planning should be environment-led. Low-density, greenfield housing is unsustainable on so many levels. Yet it is argued that as many as 400,000 homes are still planned on greenfield sites in the South in the next five years.

Idea: we need a greenfield tax, the proceeds of which should be spend on brownfield clean-up to pay for and prioritise building on the 36,600 hectares of brownfield land in this country. The developers will squeal. But, to paraphrase Billy Bragg, whose side are we on?

Well, yes, whose side are we on? For us the ideal is simple enough - whatever planning system used should deliver housing that people wish to live in in places where people wish to live. Bob Seeley MP seems to have a different idea about this:

And levelling up; many Red Wall colleagues are beginning to realise how the South-East housing obsession damages them. Why? Because the current housing methodology "systematically disadvantages poorer parts of the country, particularly in the North and Midlands … where investment is more in need", according to one expert report.

A useful summation being that people should live where Bob Seeley thinks they should in housing that Bob Seeley thinks is adequate for them. We’d note that Lady Bountiful has always been put forward as a satire of a certain sort of conservatism, not a paragon to be emulated.

It’s simple enough to show that this, possibly disparaging, summation is correct. The only justification for the entire mess of Green Belt, no greenfield, not in the SE and definitely nowhere near any of my voters set of restrictions is that without the restrictions then that’s where housing would be built. Which does rather mean that people wish to live in greenfield, possibly Green Belt, housing in the SE. The very argument for the restrictions is to stop people gaining what they desire.

The entire point of having an economy - heck, a civilisation - is that folks get more of what they desire.

As we’ve noted before the only planning change currently required is to blow up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. For the 1930s, before that abomination, was the last time the nation built the housing that people desired where they wished it to be.