Archive for July 23rd, 2010

If the housing minister had his way, today would be a landmark - the day the YIMBY was born. Yes In My Back Yard. Actually so excited is Grant Shapps about the Community Right to Build, I’m surprised, rather than TV builder Tommy Walsh, he did not get actress Meg Ryan of When Harry Met Sally fame to launch the initiative. Yes! Yes! Oh God Yes! In My Back Yard. YYOGYIMBY doesn’t quite work though as an acronym does it?
Talking of faking it, Shapps is certainly not faking his enthusiasm or sincere belief that this route will deliver affordable homes in rural communities. “Far from the NIMBYism that often hits the headlines, up and down the country there are entire communities willing and eager to give the go-ahead for new developments in their area. The countryside must be a vibrant place to live, and cannot be allowed to become a museum. I want to give communities the power to preserve their villages, which are currently struggling to survive because of a shortage of affordable homes.”
The catch is that in order to build and bypass planning there needs to be at least 80 percent local approval via referendum, which is about 79 percent more than most rural planning applications get. With Community Land Trusts able to acquire land for local benefit this is certainly handing power back from central Government to the parish pump. But Shapps seems to think, as part of his good mate David Cameron’s Big Society, that local yeomen, with their women folk loading ham and cheese into doorstep sandwiches and hay carts of cider ready for when the sun goes down, will all be singing ‘hi-ho’ as they build new properties for the children of the village, still trapped in their parents homes aged 30-something. A sort of bucolic DIY SOS on steroids.
Shapps believes this localism will free communities of “the red tape and bureaucracy” that thwarts development. Most of that red tape is wrapped round perfectly sustainable new housing schemes by the very local worthies Shapps is handing power to. The sweetener of matching council tax revenues for any new homes built probably will not get past a Treasury review anyway.
Shapps in opposition purported to be the housebuilder’s friend. But listening to him on the radio this morning he talked about why local communities should not have to accept inappropriate development put up by the housebuilding industry. Even if it eventually got through planning, housebuilders are not usually looking to impose “inappropriate development” on communities. They don’t sell.
David Ireland, chief executive of the independent charity Empty Homes, does not believe the community right to build is a Nimbys charter. “Most Nimbys just say no to authority. Make them the authority and they will have to change,” said Ireland.
I would love to believe him and be proved wrong and even if this initiative did ignite a sustainable supply of affordable rural housing - zero carbon presumably? - we will still, on a national level, be scandalously short of meeting the chronic housing need. At some point and in some places we are going to have to build in big numbers. Did anybody say eco-towns?

Rupert Bates is editorial director of www.whathouse.co.uk. Follow him at www.twitter.com/rupertbates

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