Peter Fortune MP's latest column in the News Shopper.
We need to build more homes for the next generation. Renting a flat, let alone buying a house, is too expensive. There are several reasons for this, including the high level of immigration and London’s economic powerhouse status, which puts enormous pressure on housing. But at its heart, our country has not built enough homes.
The average home costs more than half a million pounds in Bromley. That’s 13 times higher than the average salary. Nearly three decades ago, in 1996, a home here cost only four times the average salary. It’s no wonder too many young people cannot afford to climb the housing ladder.
The question isn’t whether we should build more homes but where and what we should build. The Labour government’s approach thus far has been to impose unrealistic targets while removing green belt protections around London. They are also pressing on with plans to remove local controls over planning and sidestep councils who stand up for their residents.
Labour’s plan is a recipe for unsustainable, unpopular, and undeliverable urban sprawl across the countryside. If they continue, we risk losing what makes places like Bromley, Hayes, and Biggin Hill special. We’re the greenest borough in London, with family homes and a unique character. People do not want to live in small flats in tall tower blocks. They want access to the countryside and space to grow their family. That’s why people want to move here.
But the Labour government’s plans risk causing irreparable harm to our borough. Firstly, they are lowering targets in Labour areas to shift housebuilding onto the green belt. Labour reduced London’s overall housing targets by a fifth, stating it was “removed from reality” to expect the capital to deliver three times as many homes as it is currently building. By the same logic, they demand the impossible from Bromley, whose target is to quadruple from 770 to 3,000 new homes a year.
Meanwhile, they’ve substantially weakened green belt protections. The Labour government will demand councils to release green belt land if they cannot meet their inflated housing targets. They’ve also created a new ‘grey belt’ designation that will effectively allow developers to challenge land’s green belt status in the courts. These changes threaten to bulldoze our local countryside, with little infrastructure or local services to support thousands more homes.
These high targets also fail to consider the size of a home. A studio apartment on the 19th floor and a four-bedroom semi-detached house are treated as one unit, despite the latter being in higher demand. Labour’s approach will effectively make it harder to provide family homes and will encourage smaller and taller developments. The outcome will be tiny homes and overcrowding as families continue to be priced out of London.
We need to build more homes. The answer to our housing challenges will lie in gentle density developments where the infrastructure already exists, rather than tower blocks or urban sprawl on the countryside. But Labour’s approach will fail to build the homes we need while irreparably damaging what makes Bromley great.
