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Readers of this column will be familiar with the issues I have highlighted over the years regarding housebuilding and expansion. These issues include, non-exhaustively, our city council’s abject failure to do that which it always formally and without fail promises to do, utilising those much-loved elements of the original master plan such as proper grid roads; proper redways; pedestrian separation from traffic; housing areas which include shops, dentist and doctors’ surgeries, schools and workplaces keeping MK a polycentric city.

In addition, it has regularly ignored the bleated pleadings from our previous government, delivered with all the bravado and push of a wet blancmange, for “Infrastructure before Expansion”.

In recent years we have also seen huge plots of land in our expansion areas be given unnecessary time extensions on their planning permissions while large house developers laugh happily to the bank as their land values soar and the few houses they actually build increase in value due, some say, to additional, deliberate, scarcity.

Entirely coincidentally, it seems, in the last few years according to very many sources between a fifth and a quarter of Conservative Party funds have come from property developers. Housing Today reported in July 2021 under the headline Anti-corruption charity says scale of donations creates ‘real risk of corruption’ as controversy over planning bill continues.

It wrote: “Property developers were behind more than one-fifth of donations to the Conservative Party over the past decade, according to anti-corruption campaigners who say the party’s reliance on the industry risks deterring ministers from tackling the housing crisis. Transparency International said that not only did more than 20% of individual donations come from people or organisations with interests in the property sector but that just ten large property sector donations accounted for one-tenth of the party’s income between 2010 and 2020.”

One rightly wonders if substantial donations to the Labour Party’s coffers are not already under way. Time – and the Electoral Commission which monitors such things – will no doubt tell.

We have a new government and the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, has promised to “get Britain building again” by bringing in compulsory house-building targets and, it seems, preparing to rebrand parts of the Green Belt around London as Grey Belt.
She said that she would overhaul restrictions and make the “tough and hard choices” necessary. But is simply claiming to force the big housebuilders to actually build homes rather than sitting on their hands and land-banking going to happen and is it going to help MK? Many think not. Building new homes also featured prominently in the King’s Speech to Parliament last month.

One may well ask why we need to build so many new homes, anyway. Some claim that immigration has added to this need; others that as Britons can no longer permanently dwell easily in Europe since Brexit, fewer are retiring there and reducing UK population numbers. One thing is certain; families are smaller than they have ever been, many encouraged to only have two children by government family benefit restrictions for those who dare to have more, so it’s not that.

I sought help from a few sources. In February 2017, the government produced and presented to Parliament a White Paper entitled Fixing our broken housing market. Then-Prime Minister Theresa May, in her foreword, said: “Our broken housing market is one of the greatest barriers to progress in Britain today. Whether buying or renting, the fact is that housing is increasingly unaffordable – particularly for ordinary working-class people who are struggling to get by.

Today the average house costs almost eight times average earnings – an all-time record. As a result, it is difficult to get on the housing ladder and the proportion of people living in the private rented sector has doubled since 2000.

These high housing costs hurt ordinary working people the most. In total more than 2.2 million working households with below-average incomes spend a third or more of their disposable income on housing. This means they have less money to spend on other things every month, and are unable to put anything aside to get together the sums needed for a deposit.

Those who own their own home are finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with the mortgage and struggle to save for later life. And many worry about the ability of their children and grandchildren to afford their own home and to have access to the same chances in life that they have enjoyed.”

The UK has built on average 160,000 new homes a year since the 1970s, the paper continued. The consensus is that the UK needs between 225,000 and 275,000 a year to keep pace with population growth. Only 11% of land in England has been built on.

The White Paper said the problem was due to councils not planning for the homes they need, house building at too slow a rate and a construction industry reliant on a small number of big firms.

As a result the ratio of average house prices to average earnings has more than doubled since 1998 and that means having a safe, secure home to call your own is an increasingly distant dream.

The White Paper also added that houses were earning more than the people living in them. In 2015, the average home in the South East increased in value by £29,000, while average annual pay in the region was £24,542. The average London home made its owner more than £22 an hour – considerably above the average Londoner’s hourly rate.

Local authorities should not put up with applicants who secure planning permission but do not use it. “They will have nowhere to hide from this government if they fail to plan and deliver the homes this country needs,” the White Paper declared.

That did not happen, did it? No wonder the housebuilders are happily land-banking.

The White Paper also endorsed how conscientiously and importantly the government regarded public engagement in the plans considered by local authorities, none of which were delivered. Why do we always hear both national and local government of every political persuasion making these rose-tinted promises and ignoring them resolutely wherever the rubber hits the road?

In September 2023 the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence published a research document Why have the volume housebuilders been so profitable?, full of the most well-researched statistics, including detailed analysis of the finances of Britain’s house builders. Here’s a quote in the report by Pete Redfern, then chief executive of Taylor Wimpey in May 2016 which backs up my points above: “As the big three repeatedly remind shareholders and analysts in their earnings calls, land is foundational to this business model: buying land at the right price, in the right places, at the right time and gaining planning permission, is fundamental to the profitability of these housebuilders. Indeed, these volume housebuilders see themselves, partly if not largely, as land investment businesses. We said that we weren’t just a house builder, we were a land portfolio company… We still believe that today.”

The report adds that while purchasing short-term land is important to volume housebuilders’ business models, gaining control of development land earlier in the process is fundamental. As soon as a piece of land is granted planning permission for residential development, its value can increase dramatically. The report says. For example, planning permission for residential use may increase the value of a site from around £20,000 per hectare for agricultural use to more than £5 million per hectare in areas with high house prices (MHCLG, 2018). By bringing strategic land through the planning system, whether by outright purchase of the freehold or via an option agreement subject to the granting of outline planning permission, housebuilders can capture a greater proportion of this value uplift (although they would capture less by way of option agreement).

So where does that leave Milton Keynes? Sadly, at the mercy of those banking land, at the mercy of a new government with all the usual ‘must say’ promises of those in power and subject to the blatant unwillingness of Milton Keynes City Council to force developers to stick to the principles of the original Master Plan, most of which it still largely espouses.
I have no doubt that we shall see all our new developments and expansion areas become islands of poor, cramped, right-up-to-the-road housing with poor, narrow streets with little or no parking, a great lack of shops, schools, dentist and doctor surgeries, a lack of workplaces, and most importantly, perhaps, a lack of hope.

We shall see new homes, yes, but ones that will never be a ‘home for life’. Meanwhile may I humbly suggest a new logo for this government in anticipation: “Things can only get bitter!”

Not a typo.

Cheerio.