General Boles opens strategic peace talks with planning opponents

By Mark Wallace
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Aside from George Osborne, Nick Boles has one of the most difficult jobs in the Coalition.

As Planning Minister, he sees his task as being to get construction going, not to preserve the labyrinthine system in perpetuity. The urgency with which Britain requires new building is beyond doubt - not just to reverse the disastrous decline in the building sector but to meet a large shortfall in housing.

The fortunes of the Chancellor rest in large part on his success, too. Yet another study published today warns that the Help to Buy scheme risks inflating a housing bubble - pouring financial support for purchasers into a market with constrained supply. That threat will only be averted if more houses are built.

Boles' reform programme faces some mighty opponents. The Daily Telegraph has thrown its full editorial weight behind a "Hands Off Our Land" campaign, with the support of the National Trust (an organisation once run by a certain Sir Jack Boles, father of the Trust's 21st century bogeyman).

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Pickles dismantles Osborne's new conservatory

By Paul Goodman
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Mike Jones, the Conservative leader of Cheshire West and Cheshire Council and a senior figure in the Local Government Association, has reason to raise a sceptical eyebrow at how the details of the Government's compromise scheme over home extensions will work.  But there's no doubt that Eric Pickles, who has cobbled it all together, has calmed some quivering nerves.  Earlier this week, a Tory backbench revolt over CLG's original proposal cut the Government's majority to 27.  Zac Goldsmith, one of the rebellion's ringleaders, tells today's Daily Telegraph that the Communities Secretary's approach is sensible: "Crucially it protects people's right to object, which has always been a red line for me. I'm pleased the Government has listened to concerns."

Pickles isn't being blamed for the original snarl-up.  Indeed, it was his appeal to backbenchers, made from the despatch box itself, that soothed the revolt.  The Communities Secretary isn't always an emollient figure, but the former Bradford Council leader is a veteran fixer, and friends tell me that he relished the chance to go to the chamber and quell an upset.  He was in a marvellous position to do so because Conservative MPs, rightly or wrongly, don't blame him for the original plans: they point the finger at George Osborne.  I wouldn't claim for a moment that Pickles encouraged them to do so, but his CLG team is very cool about some of the Treasury's more fervent schemes for growth.

Nick Boles is widely seen as an exception - as a committed ally of the Treasury - but this is to simplify the position.  The Planning Minister has indeed been sent into the valley of death by the Chancellor (as I've put it previously), but he's well aware that this mission puts his political life in danger, and though he believes in the cause - after all, he's backed housing growth since his Policy Exchange days - he isn't at all gung-ho about it.  Indeed, he didn't seek to go above Pickles's head and appeal to Osborne over the climbdown, and played his part in trying to head off the backbench uprising.  But since he's seen as the Treasury's man, he was far less well placed to do so than wily old Pickles.

This week's news from Fitch is a reminder of how desparate Osborne is for growth, and how apprehensive Ministers can be when the quest for it raises thorny questions about principle and practice.  Let me raise just one: if localism means anything, is it right not to allow them local discretion over planning practice on, say, ground floor home extensions?  Different people will answer in different ways, but the question is legitimate.  My own view is that Osborne is more sinned against than sinning when it comes to clashes with other Ministers over growth - that he's on the right side of the argument over housing, airports, infrastructure and green taxes (though he must take a big share of the blame for ensnaring the party in green excesses in opposition).

Which isn't to say that the Treasury's original plans were correct in this particular case.  But the resistance of backbenchers to development on their patches, the ambiguity of the Liberal Democrats (some of whom are pushing More Garden Cities Now), the lateness of part of the Treasury push and the long timetable for building houses conspire against the Chancellor getting big housing growth in the little-more-than-two-year-period between now and the general election.  If the present moment was the start of a new Parliament, there's little doubt what Osborne could and perhaps would do: cut the rise of spending further in order to cut taxes further.  But we aren't there, and it's hard to see where a big upturn is going to come from.

Cameron promises three-fold crackdown on immigration

By Tim Montgomerie
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Yesterday morning I blogged some general thoughts on Cameron's immigration speech that he'll give later today. We now have some more detail on the PM's prepared remarks.

His speech will have three themes overall: (i) Cutting immigrants' access to benefits; (ii) ending 'something for nothing' benefits'; and (iii) cracking down on illegal immigration.

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Let's slap a preservation order on Nick Boles

By Paul Goodman
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Max Hastings is a former working colleague of Simon Jenkins - the two wrote a gripping book together on the Falklands War - and a former President of the Campaign to Preserve Rural England. So it is scarcely surprising that he sees eye to eye with his old friend about the desire of Nick Boles, the Planning Minister, to build more homes outside cities and suburbs as well as within them.  In today's Mail, he describes Boles as "clever, plausible and charming" , but this turns out to be only the feint before the knife is plunged deep between the Planning Minister's ribs.  For Boles is also "willing to say, or do, almost anything to advance himself", not to mention crushing "local opinion and expertise" beneath his "jackboots".

I don't know exactly where the Planning Minister is planting his jackboots this morning, but I have spoken to sources close to the Department.  They can't comment on the individual cases raised, but point out that a crucial question will be whether the councils concerned have the five year land supply to meet their housing need - which councils are require to have under the National Planning Policy Framework which together with its presumption in favour of sustainable development the National Trust, of which Jenkins is Chairman, apparently supported, along with the CPRE (claims my source, who also disputes Hastings's figures on the amount of land built on in any way).

But regardless of the cases Hastings raises, it should be remembered that Boles's main new housing scheme does not, repeat not, force new homes on unwilling local communities.  Rather, it seeks to offer neighbourhood groups a slice of the Community Infrastructure Levy in return for approving development plans.  I'm a bit dubious about whether the Treasury will (or can afford to) put enough money into the plan to make it work, but the image of Boles goose-stepping across England's green and pleasant land is just a little exaggerated.  The Planning Minister is trying to ensure that younger people get the homes that older people, such as Hastings and Sir Simon, already enjoy, and all power to his elbow, not to mention boots.

Is the pre-local election season really the right time to announce new garden towns?

By Paul Goodman
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Buried away in the Financial Times's (£) story this morning about a "joint appearance on the eve of the Budget" that David Cameron and Nick Clegg will apparently make - to "make several announcements, including shared equity schemes, social housing and support for first-time buyers" - was the following detail:

At the housing launch, Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg will also promise new “garden towns”, more flats above shops and an expanded private rented sector.

Now it may well be that the reference to garden towns in the appearance will be vague, that no dogs will bark, and that the caravans will move on.  However, this may not be so - in which case while there may be no electoral risk to the Liberal Democrats, there will most certainly be one to the Conservative Party.

The Financial Times's story links back to an earlier piece in the paper which reported Nick Boles's speech in which the Planning Minister declared that the percentage of green land that should be built on should increase from 9 to 12 per cent.  The paper noted that Clegg had recently promised “garden cities and suburbs for the 21st century”.

I'm all for more infrastructure spending on road and rail (though very sceptical indeed about HS2), nuclear power stations, and airports - though the big decision on the latter has been postponed until after 2015.  Housebuilding has its part to play, too, and I like Boles's localist ideas, which draw on the work of Policy Exchange.

There's more to come: the think-tank is shortly to produce recommendations about self-build.  But we're at the wrong point of the political cycle for any big move on garden towns or cities.

• The Telegraph and Mail will go bonkers.

• They will be doing so during the run-up to May's country council and other elections, many of which will take place in the Tory shire heartlands.

• If UKIP has any tactical sense (which I think it does) it will exploit any plans ruthlessly, neatly if dishonestly linking them to Romanian and Bulgarian migration next year.

• It might be worth the political risk of all this if the towns actually got built.  So, at any rate, some of those who want more homes for young people would argue.  But this won't happen before 2015: indeed, it must be doubtful whether any new schemes would see substantial work at all.

The time to begin undertaking a project of this kind as at the beginning of a Parliamentary cycle, not in the middle of it.  Any such scheme will build few homes, if any, but lose of votes - oh, and discredit any further garden town or city proposals, probably for quite some time.  To borrow a phrase from Douglas Hurd, David Cameron should give this madness a miss.

Boles is right to say that social justice means new homes. So let's hope his localist housing plan pays off.

By Paul Goodman
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The average age of a first-time home-buyer is now 35, compared to 28 ten years ago.  Policy-makers can respond to this continuing rise in one of three main ways.  The first is to do nothing, and watch the British dream of home ownership become the preserve of the middle-aged and elderly.  The second is for the state to impose new housing on local communities by central diktat.  This would be incompatible with a free society, and is in any event impossible under the present planning framework, in which local authorities have played such a large part since 1945.  This was none the less the approach tried by the last Labour Government, with its regional spatial strategies and hosuing targets and all the rest of it.  The result was the lowest level of housebuilding since the war.

The third was set out on this site last year by Alex Morton of Policy Exchange.  Essentially, it envisages central government offers local communities money in exchange for new developments.  This is the approach that Nick Boles, who became Planning Minister last September, is taking.  Yesterday evening, he set out some of the details on Newsnight: neighbourhood groups will be offered a slice of the Community Infrastructure Levy in return for approving development plans, and local people will be asked to back them in a referendum.  Boles is a former Director of Policy Exchange, and the move reflects its long-held localist convictions.  I have been supportive of the scheme on this site and in the Daily Telegraph, though I was doubtful whether Boles would get approval either from CLG or, more importantly, the Treasury.

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Nick Boles’s proposal for solving Britain’s housing shortage? Build beautiful

By Peter Hoskin
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Judging only from the headlines in today’s papers, you might get the impression that Nick Boles wants to pour ugly, ugly concrete over Britain’s countryside. They’re taking their cue from the minister’s claim, spoken in a Newsnight interview which airs tonight, that:

“In the UK and England at the moment we’ve got about nine per cent of land developed. All we need to do is build on another two to three per cent of land and we’ll have solved a housing problem.”

But, actually, it’s beauty — not ugliness — that Mr Boles is keen to spread. In a speech that he’s delivering to the Town and Country Planning Association’s annual conference tomorrow, he suggests that a lot of the resistance to new housing developments comes about because the developments are often “pig ugly”. This creates a “vicious cycle”, which he describes thus:

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Stormed at with shot and shell, Nick Boles rides into planning's Valley of Death

By Paul Goodman
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Gunfire greets the new Planning Minister and his views on building more homes...

Consider the prospect that Nicholas Boles, the new Planning Minister at CLG, surveys as he takes up his new duties, like some epaulette-garnished light dragoon peering towards the Russian guns at Balaclava.  Cannon to the right of him, cannon to the left of him, and all that.  On the one side are George Osborne and the Treasury, urging instant housebuilding, a purging of green belt rules and regulations, Growth Now.  On the other are CLG and the massed ranks of Conservative councillors in the shires and the Mail and Telegraph stables - plus those who tend to vote for those councillors and read those papers: the pressed voters of the town and suburb extremities who, understandably, don't want to lose the little green space they've got.

Somewhere amidst the smoke and fog of war David Cameron can be glimpsed roaming restlessly, his mind on many things.  And at the end of the valley are the most deadly guns of all: those of the town hall planners who have run the system since the era of Clement Attlee, and thus have everything to lose from change.  Indeed, Mr Boles has the distinction, perhaps unique even to this Minister-battered age, of coming under fire before his appointment was actually confirmed.  The mere rumour of it sent those so disposed scurrying to Google Search, where they rapidly dug out some colourful remarks of the kind politicians craft to give fizz to a speech (he had described opponents of planning reform as "hysterical, scare-mongering, latter-day luddites").

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Housing - if not radical reform now, then when?

By Paul Goodman
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Policy Exchange's housing plan might have been written to offend vested interests...

In our Comment Section today, Alex Morton of Policy Exchange urges the creation of a Secretary of State of Housing in the coming reshuffle, so that this new Cabinet appointment can drive through radical planning reform.  He also argues that the current centralised system has failed and that localism will succeed: under his scheme, set out in the think-tank's paper Cities for Growth and in previous Policy Exchange papers, planning would be taken away from local councils and given to local communities.

In short, these would vote on development proposals for their own backyards, and yes votes would bring compensation for those affected.  NIMBYs would thus have an incentive to become YIMBYs - Yes-In-My-Back-Yardies.  Local plans would be stripped down.  Section 106 agreements would go.  Quality control would be more about local material, less about high density and zero car spaces.  When supported locally, building would be easier on brown field and green field sites - but there would be a green belt improvement levy to improve the parts of it that aren't built on.

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As the growth row over Heathrow goes on, don't forget the one over housing - and building on the Green Belt

There was more in ConservativeHome's newslinks this morning about Ministerial disagreements over Heathrow, which are being projected by suggestions that Justine Greening, the Transport Secretary, may be moved.  The report was from the Financial Times (£).

The lobby is writing less about the other big divergence of view over building and growth - namely, over housing and the green belt  This is probably because are no suggestions that Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, will be moved in the reshuffle.

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