Both Alan, the LOSRA Chairman, and his predecessor were guest columnists for the Surrey Herald. Both, in their turn, ceased writing for this particular journal because of the random and nonsensical way in which the sub-editor wielded his red pen. From now on Alan will be publishing his thoughts on the Website and you are invited to join him by reading his first Soap Box:
The Times this morning (19 December) carried an editorial piece extolling the virtues of building on Green Belt. All the usual tired arguments are wheeled out: the planning regime is too sluggish, the number of households is increasing exponentially, people are living longer. In addition there is the latest specious nonsense (which had its recent origins in the Department for Communities and Local Government) that Green Belt is inherently ugly and would look better if it were covered in bricks.
The problem, as the Times would have it, is that a failure to build enough houses has led to the unaffordable price of housing. In fact, the opposite is true. The unaffordable price of housing has led to a shortage of houses. This might sound like a dispute over which came first – chicken or egg? But it isn’t, and here’s why.
The un-affordability problem is sourced in central government policy. Successive Chancellors of all parties, and Bank of England Governors over several preceding decades, have allowed a situation to develop where the role of housing as a class of financial asset has been allowed to completely overwhelm the role of housing as a means of stopping the rain falling on our collective heads.
As a result, house prices have been bid up to a level which is acceptable when considered purely as a financial asset, measured against other financial assets such as stocks and bonds, by those who see housing as just another method of investing their money. But that has generated prices which are out of reach for people who just want a home, either to buy or to rent.
This is the crucial housing problem. House prices have risen too far, and first time buyers cannot afford to buy. Couples thinking of starting a family cannot find an even slightly bigger residence. And does The Times (or the DCLG, for that matter) really – honestly - think that building more and more houses will result in any of them becoming more affordable?
We could concrete over all the ‘ugly’ Green Belt in the south east of England; in Spelthorne we could fill in all the reservoirs and fill them with tower blocks; we could moor vast terraced –housing boats in the river, suspend condominiums from barrage balloons; and the price of housing would be affected not one tiny jot.
This is a problem sourced in central government. It cannot be solved by building locally. And to argue otherwise is to dabble in the finances of Toy Town, or what is known in the trade as Noddynomics.
