From time to time the more popular newspapers carry a story about a young mother leaving a new-born but illegitimate baby on a doorstep and stealing away in the hope that someone will take good care of it. Such stories put me in mind of the housebuilding targets for south east England and their unhappy parent Nick Raynsford.
Last month Raynsford duly left his little package on the town hall doorstep and tip-toed away. He had, of course, confirmed the Government's "compromise" figure which was heavily shaved down from the original heavily contested Crow recommendations.
The announcement went pretty well unnoticed, though with foot and mouth disease consuming most of the media that was hardly surprising: the Government did not want to make a pre-electoral splash with this one. But it is one of the eternal perversities of political life that just when you think you have faced down one lobby, the people you thought were on your side trip you up from behind. And Raynsford ran into a furious blast from the director of the Town and Country Planning Association.
I have never been sure whether the TCPA is an industry lobby, a local authority pressure group or a philosophy society. I suppose it is the 1960s association of the word "planning" which creates the problem. One imagines tweedy ramblers musing over the distant perspectives of new towns.
Now I have no information about the sartorial taste or recreational preferences of Gideon Amos, the director of the association. But I do know that he is not best pleased with Raynsford.
Loyal to the original Crow figures, Amos accuses the Government of knowingly providing for 140 000 fewer homes than will be needed over the next decade. He portrays an image of new families remaining crowded in with mum and dad while house prices spiral beyond their reach and increasing numbers of homeless households, many from ethnic minority communities, suffer in overcrowded conditions.
"In short," Amos complains, "we enter the twenty-first century on course to visit increasing levels of homelessness on families, many of whom are already in poverty." It is easy enough to attack this as intemperate, even emotional. If it is wrong to force people to live in unacceptable conditions then the fact that the year 2000 has dawned has got precious little relevance. And if the latest forecasts for house prices are to be believed it is difficult to believe that Raynsford's undercounting will make much of a contribution.
But at heart Amos is likely to be right - at least, more right than Raynsford. My eye was caught by an item in the Financial Times showing a map of the share of employment in the information economy.
The responses to the Government's competitiveness white paper cast a wet rag over the idea that all regions could participate effectively in the new knowledge economy.
The research and strategy consultant Local Futures Group showed that the information economy, including IT, new media, financial and knowledge-based business services and research and development represented 75% of total employment in the City of London, and between 34% and 47% in several other London boroughs and Oxfordshire and Cambridge. It spoke of the brain drain of graduates from the regions to London. And the denizens of this high wage, high value information economy will want houses - and will be able to pay for them. Raynsford has provided for more houses than the local authorities want: he has almost certainly indicated fewer than they need.
Of course this regional imbalance was exactly what the development agencies were set up to counter. Indeed, ministers persist in arguing that if they fail to narrow the gap between regions they will have failed.
It seems an increasingly futile hope, given the galloping growth in the South East, eastern England and along the M4 corridor.
The Government recently dished out more money and flexibility for the Regional Development Agencies (for example, Yorkshire Forward's annual budget of £200m will increase by £130m over three years) so it is not surprising that it is now starting to fret over how they deliver their targets. It is also providing funding for the regional chambers to scrutinise the work of the RDAs.
But John Prescott could endow their chairman with the wisdom of Solomon, the touch of Midas and the luck of the devil and they still will not remove the need to build one less housing estate in the South East.
Source
Building Homes
