The Conservative pre-conference manifesto pledges to put two-thirds of new homes on “cheaper and easier” to develop brownfield land. But how will this satisfy South East demand, muses former Conservative housing minister David Curry.
Tories turn back to Hezza

The past few weeks have been good for Michael Heseltine. His autobiography has been selling well; he has emerged with flying colours from a television portrait; and he is the hero of the Tory party’s pre-conference manifesto.

Err...surely some mistake. Isn’t Hezza the unrelenting opponent of the Hague Conservative Party? Can’t the sound of teeth gnashing at Tory Central Office be heard across St James’ Park every time Hezza is on Radio 4’s Today programme?

The answer is yes. Hezza and Hague do not sit easily together. Yet skip the pages in the policy document about Europe (they are eminently skipable) and turn to the section on regeneration. The only possible headline for the policy sketched out there is “Hezza rides again.”

We find proposals for super regeneration companies with powers to compel action fields ranging from education, police, law and order and planning and to sanction grants and tax breaks. They could carry out the policy of demolishing the worst tower blocks and worst estates (the document sets the rather prudent target of 10 projects in the first five years). They would own the freehold of the land to be developed. They would be limited life companies. In short we have Urban Development Corporations and City Challenge companies rolled into one with competence extended into the social field.

This is pure Heseltine - the Heseltine of the London Docklands Development Corporation and the regeneration of Liverpool. What is more, the Tories envisage the appointment of a regeneration minister with wide-ranging co-ordinating powers - something close, in fact, to the role Heseltine played in Government.

Much detail remains to be worked out but there is a lot of sense in insisting that physical regeneration has to be associated with improvements in education, civil behaviour and employment opportunity. The test would be the ability in practice to create real synergy between national policy and local initiative in defiance of the defence of territory invariably put up by departmental ministries.

It was inevitable that the document would seek to address concerns about housing development on green sites. The Tories pledge themselves to putting two-thirds of new houses on brownfield sites nationally and say they would “target” new houses at the areas with most used land and land needing regeneration. Brownfield development, it declares (without providing the arithmetic to prove it), is “cheaper and easier.”

This policy is buttressed by the promise to end national and regional housing plans and to allow local councils a far bigger say in deciding the acceptable limits of housebuilding to meet local need on the grounds that “the current planning process is weighted against local communities and residents.” Prudently the document accepts that reserve powers would be needed for major but unspecified developments.

The objections to all this are obvious. Demand in the South East from London and immigration cannot simply be diverted to Liverpool. There is no point in targeting housing on places where people do not want to live. Regenerating the inner city so people want to return to live there will not be achieved in the timescale necessary to let anyone off the hook so far as demand in the South East is concerned.

There is a national interest in promoting economic development in the M4 corridor and around Cambridge. Brownfield development can be very expensive - especially on sites which have been used by polluting industries.

The Tories have baulked at endorsing the Rogers’ demand for VAT equalisation. The reluctance to endorse tax rises and the traditional Tory enthusiasm for home ownership have put paid to that. But the policies which flow from that enthusiasm are relatively muted - the restoration of council house discounts, encouragement of shared ownership and rent to buy and improved right-to-buy provisions for housing association tenants. It is doubtful whether there is a new surge of home ownership to be had but the Tories want to refurbish their credentials as the natural party of the owner-occupier.

The Conservative document is a political document designed to stake a claim for whatever ground Labour has left it in the housing field. The attack on prescriptive regional housing plans was inevitable given the issue’s importance to the battleground of the South East.

The regeneration plans seek to re-assert Tory intellectual ownership of a policy area where Labour has failed to establish a distinct profile as the creation of Regional Development Agencies (to be abolished by the Tories) has diffused the delivery process. Vast amounts of the detail remain to be filled in. But Michael Heseltine, at least, may permit himself an occasional wry smile of ironic satisfaction.