Has there ever been anyone so unself-consious as that women? Her gawping smile desperate for approval after she delivers some more off-the-top-of-the-head playschool policy? Her speech was properly mad. I won’t pretend to understand how dire the economic and social consequences of such unfunded tax-cuts would be on a nation already on its knees but I know a bit about housing and planning.
She has suggested we should build 500,000 homes per year. Before interest rate jumped and people had to stop buying bread so they could pay their mortgages or rent, England built just over 250k per annum. That was the post-Covid bounce period before things like Nationally Described Space Standards, Biodiversity Net Gain and the (also now cancelled) Nutrient Neutrality policies made securing planning consents even harder.
I wonder how she thinks we can double the number of new homes? Flats only? Micro-houses? Maybe we could use the fractured rock cavities we have exposed from fracking?
I can be sure of one thing though. No Tory will propose touching the Green Belt. Like the holes in your own belt, Green Belts needs to be reviewed every so often (15 years at present). We need a proper national conversation on the subject but no-one on any side is ever going to. Instead they repeat the tired matra of building on brownfield land. Again and again and again.
I haven’t even mentioned the lack of resources, skilled tradesmen and even housebuilders that would all be structural barriers.
I honestly dont know who advises her or whether, like Alan Partridge pleading with Tony Hayers for a second series, she’s just grasping at straws. There’s more chance of monkeys playing tennis than building half a million homes per year.
