Anger is brewing at Defra Secretary Steve Reed over his decision to approve plans for a new reservoir in Abingdon, Oxfordshire. All while blocking homes in his own constituency…
Reed wrote to Sadiq Khan in July to ask the mayor to call in an application for 237 homes (35% of which were going to be “affordable housing“) in his constituency in Streatham. Reed claimed “many of my constituents” believed the proposal to be “out of proportion” with other buildings. A classic NIMBY argument…
A petition from the Campaign to Protect Rural England has got 4,466 signatures as the organisation last week launched legal action to judicially review Reed’s approval of a reservoir in far away Abingdon. Happy to develop in constituencies other than his own – there’s a word for that one…
Rebecca Long-Bailey is continuing to rage from the backbenches, this time about… housing proposals. The erstwhile “Northern Powerhouse” has fired off a letter to the Salford planning department to protest against plans for the regeneration of a run-down retail park in the local area. A dastardly £1 billion investment to build homes, a new park and a playground…
3,300 homes would be built with the investment. Long-Bailey issues the classic NIMBY complaints that the buildings wouldn’t contain enough affordable homes and that plans are “not in keeping with the local character and distinctiveness of the area.” This is the “Local Character and Distinctiveness” that Long-Bailey is fighting to conserve…
Meanwhile 770 kids are living in temporary accommodation in Salford as blockers force housing costs up. Any way to oppose the Starmerites…
Some manifesto pledges Labour made are just not going to happen. Miliband’s pledge to totally decarbonise electricity supply by 2030 is away with the fairies. Expect that to be revised by reality soon.
The other ambitious pre-election pledge was the pledge to build 1.5 million homes by the next election. 300,000-a-year, or 25,000-a-month. Today the Housing Secretary Angela Rayner told MPs the Government planned to oversee building of 370,000 homes every year, up 70,000 from the figure Labour promised in the General Election. The target for new homes is now 1.85 million homes within five years – more than 30,000-a-month. Last quarter there were 22,310 housing starts nationally. To meet their target they will have to quadruple the pace of building. It is doable if the government has the will to drive it whatever the cost in terms of votes…
Was this increase triggered by the taunts of Kemi Badenoch? Kemi wickedly identified that it won’t be easy:
🔥 @KemiBadenoch gives Angela Rayner and Labour a reality check. pic.twitter.com/VtNlZugK4k
— Conservatives (@Conservatives) July 19, 2024
In the UK, a house or a flat is counted as started on the date work begins on the laying of the foundation. The figures are released quarterly, economists expect some 50,000 starts this quarter. Rayner will need to accelerate that dramatically, press releases are easy to send, laying bricks is much harder. Guido wishes them well, we’ll be tracking how they are doing on making that target every quarter…
Michelle Welsh, who took Sherwood Forest off Tory frontbencher Mark Spencer, has got straight to work in her constituency. By opposing new houses…
The new Labour MP’s first ever meeting of her parliamentary career was with the local NIMBY group “Hucknall Against Whyburn Farm Development“, which opposes new homes being built in some fields. For some reason the campaign even has its own merchandise…
For all the excitable reporting that disciplined Labour is “waging a war against NIMBYs“, the frontbench will obviously have to get through swathes of their own MPs if it wants to force rapid development. Campaign in poetry, govern in prose…
Red Wall Labour backbencher Jonathan Brash told GB News that Starmer should resign:
“I’m completely fed up about it, and I think it’s got to the point now where I genuinely think that, as far as the Prime Minister is concerned, it’s not a case of if, it’s when.”
