The UK’s political landscape faces changes in 2024. The Prime Minister has indicated a general election will be held in the ‘second half’ of the year
[1] and Wales’s First Minister has already confirmed his resignation, sparking a leadership race within Welsh Labour.
First up is the Labour (and Senedd) leadership race in Wales, between Vaughan Gething MS and Jeremy Miles MS. The result will be announced on 16 March. We do not yet know what either candidate will say about the development industry through their campaigning, but manifestos and promises will in due course be the subject of rigorous analysis. For now, perhaps, it is more fruitful to consider the broader (and possibly emerging) political picture within which this contest is to be run and its implications for the development sector.
Later this year the UK will see a general election. By-election results and polling indicate it is more likely than not to lead to a Labour Government for the first time in 14 years. In Wales, Labour has had control of the Senedd (formally Welsh Assembly), since devolution in 1998. With the next Welsh election not due until 2026 (accepting this might change under the new leadership), it seems increasingly likely that the Senedd and UK Parliament will be on the same political page for the first time since 2010.
For the UK, the headlines are already out there. Labour’s ‘How not If’ statement of October 2023
[2] lays the foundations for a way forward that captures a desire to promote growth, through:
-
Strengthening powers to approve homes in areas with out-of-date local plans;
-
Enforcing local housing targets;
-
Improving the speed of local plan making (including recruiting planners!);
-
Adding flexibility to the affordable housing program – acknowledging soaring interest rates and increasing uncertainty that harms delivery;
-
Increasing delegated approval powers to speed up decision making;
-
Introduce ‘off the shelf’ environmental mitigations – to cut down on surveys and costs;
-
Promote a raft of New Towns; and,
-
In urban centres, accelerate sustainable brownfield development.
Alongside this has been talk about opening up a discussion about Green Belt, with a view to releasing poorer quality land – so-called ‘grey belt’ – for development
[3].
This direction of travel has sought to create a dividing line with the Conservative Government, solidified by the
recent changes to the NPPF which – despite the Secretary of State’s long term plan for housing initiatives, and interventions on various local plans and in London and Cambridge and Leeds
[4] – has been seen as a concession to backbench MPs that will lead to less development overall
[5].
But what of Wales? Of course, the Welsh and English contexts are very different, hence why planning is a devolved matter, to allow, in theory, for a more nuanced approach to local issues. But if Labour does win the General Election and both UK and Wales are led by the same party, with shared political identities, then it is worth considering to what extent Welsh Labour’s current approach aligns with the Labour’s UK call to action, and perhaps offering food for thought for the Welsh leadership candidates on how they might shape their approaches to the housing and development sector:
- UK Labour has placed housebuilding at the heart of its mission to grow the economy, with a promise for “shovels in the ground and cranes in the sky” to deliver “more beautiful cities [and] more prosperous towns”. Labour has recognised that housebuilding can be a key economic driver and one where value capture can achieve investment in infrastructure with less calls on the public finances[6]. There has been no equivalent expression of support for boosting housebuilding as a vehicle for economic growth and home ownership from Welsh Labour so far
- As has been well documented, the Senedd abolished the requirement for a five-year land supply in 2020. As a result, LPAs in Wales set and monitor targets locally, with very limited enforcement for under delivery. The recent amendments to the NPPF have seen some softening in the five-year land supply requirement in England[7] - although still far from disapplied. However, Labour (UK) has pledged to reverse these NPPF changes and seeking to reinforce housing targets and strengthen the enforcement of delivery, – noticeably at odds with Welsh Labour’s approach.
- Setting housing targets in Wales remains to be determined through each individual LDP with household projections as the starting point. Household projections are essentially trend based so reflect past levels of housing delivery rather than provide an assessment of future needs. Whilst Welsh Government assessments of housing need include a policy uplift for affordable housing delivery no such adjustment is expected for market housing delivery. There is no indication that UK Labour would seek to fundamentally change the current approach in England, which sets central estimates of housing need targets to boost housing delivery (both market and affordable) in areas where houses are least affordable to account for past undersupply.
- UK Labour will focus on the delivery of all types and tenures of housing, including market housing with an explicit effort to “save the dream of home ownership”. By contrast, Welsh Labour’s focus, monitoring and targeting is based largely on the delivery of affordable housing and more narrowly defined, focused largely on social rent which is seen as a core tenure.
- UK Labour is proposing to invest in New Towns, whereas Future Wales (Wales’s National Development Plan) explicitly rules them out.
- Whilst UK Labour is suggesting it will support and enable development to proceed in areas with out-of-date local plans, Welsh Government has continued to prioritise the plan led system irrespective of whether an LDP is time expired. There is no effective sanction to secure continued housing delivery where an LDP is not being reviewed in a timely manner.
When it comes to determining how to deliver new homes and economic growth through development, Labour UK and Labour Wales appears to be promoting very different approaches. Indeed, right now the Labour-led Welsh Government appears almost to have a stronger policy alignment with the current UK Government, as crystallised by the Secretary of State’s recent NPPF changes. Accepting the principle of devolved powers, and a different economic, social and environmental context – can this political difference within one political party be sustained?
This is perhaps something both Vaughan Gething MS and Jeremy Miles MS should be pondering, before considering how their Manifestos might address planning and development…
[1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67883242
[2]https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/how-not-if-labour-will-jump-start-planning-to-build-1-5-million-homes-and-save-the-dream-of-homeownership/
[3] In his October Conference speech, Sir Keir Starmer MP said: ““And no, this doesn’t mean we’re tearing up the green-belt. Labour is the party that protects our green spaces. No party fights harder for our environment. We created the national parks. Created the green-belt in the first place. I grew up in Surrey. But where there are clearly ridiculous uses of it, disused car parks, dreary wasteland. Not a green belt. A grey belt. Sometimes within a city’s boundary. Then this cannot be justified as a reason to hold our future back. We will take this fight on. That’s a Britain built to last.”
[4] See the SoS WMS here: https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-statements/detail/2023-12-19/hcws161
[5] See this commentary here: https://www.ft.com/content/1f0adb36-612d-4a34-bb0f-1643a841c417
[6] A link made in this Times article: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/starmer-knows-houses-can-rebuild-economy-9ntkwmfwl
[7]https://lichfields.uk/blog/2023/december/20/changes-to-5yhls-under-the-revised-nppf-not-great-not-terrible
