Tag: town planning

Spatial Planning in England: Act III

Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill: Final judgements

Levelling Up, i.e. bridging the gap between the economic performance of the north and south of the country, was always a vague, ambiguous aim. While I do indeed agree that the northern question must be tackled, thus far I haven’t seen anything to convince me that it’s little more than political appeasement and a potential bargaining chip to dangle in front of northern Tory voters in the so-called imaginary “Red Wall” when election time rolls round. Even as a tool of political manipulation, I haven’t even seen any cash on the table so as far as I’m concerned, it exists in rhetoric and nothing else and I hope that voters see that whenever our next election may be (could be much sooner than we think).

Now that this iteration of Government has collapsed, what happens to Levelling Up remains to be seen but likely it will be shelved once and for all, at least in its current guise. I could write angrily and bitterly about Levelling Up funds being used to fund housing in the stockbroker-infested greenbelts of Surrey instead of improving lives in the most forlorn and impoverished corners of post-industry, but I will desist for now.

But let’s look at what the long-awaited Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill actually means for planning in practice.

1. What does beauty actually mean?

Apparently the new planning system will be based on the principles of “beauty, infrastructure, democracy, environment, and neighbourhood engagement.”

Not sure if this is a citation of the Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote to Augustus Caesar that good architecture must include “utilitas, firmitas, and venustas” – utility, strength, and beauty – but indeed I have no idea what to a Tory mind, beauty might look like.

Some people (popular among fascists…) think rationalism is beautiful. Others see beauty in brutalism (normally the same British leftists who worship Orwell). Personally I love Bauhaus and some types of modernism but many would argue against it on the grounds of pretentiousness (and they would have a point). Pomo could be beautiful to some. Baroque, especially of the English and German variants make me want to puke but I don’t think that opinion is shared across the board. Beaux-arts, Art Deco, Gothic, English Renaissance all have their merits. And the list goes on.

What I’m trying to say is this: beauty is wholly subjective. How can that be a principle upon which to base a modern planning system? How do we measure beauty? And will National Design Codes actually hamper aesthetically pleasing towns and cities?

2. No mention of the climate crisis
This is particularly astonishing. A government in 2022 should absolutely NOT be allowed to publish something as central to climate change mitigation as planning of the built environment without a clear, and detailed plan about how it aims to phase out fossil fuels and transition to carbon neutrality. What is their problem? The science is there. Other countries around the world are making at least token gestures (very slow and still we face a huge existential threat). But no mention. We should be making massive changes to our cities to reduce manifold public health crises and climate change induced problems with increased flooding events, biodiversity loss, and in the south extreme heating events. Where is the renewables plan? Where are the savings from the construction industry, one of the biggest contributors to the UK’s carbon emissions? Any ideas around biophiic design and expansion of green spaces? Carbon sinks? The time for imaginative ideas and learning from others around the world is now.

But here we just get a wilful radio silence.
These are not serious people.

3. No mention of cost of living crisis.
A toxic combination of Brexit and the war in Ukraine has had a terrifying upward spiral on prices in the UK. Food and heating in particular are impacting households across the country, but also the spiking costs of building materials will lead to a deflation of the building boom soon. The White Paper was published after both of these factors became the top headlines of the day. And still, nothing.

How do we address affordable housing?
How can we combine tackling climate change with the cost of living crisis?
Can we develop land to start cultivate land for urban farming?
How will we feed our people as the crisis deepens?
So many huge and life-threatening questions. So little imagination.

4. Roman Emperor-style dictatorial clauses disguised as “democratic decision-making;”
Street votes?
Nomenclature of streets and statues?
Really?
Granting the Secretary of State more centralised powers over seemingly trivial but local-level affairs while pushing fairly major and significant tasks to resource-strapped local authorities seems a bit backwards. Also, this government have shown time and again that they are out-of-touch and cannot be trusted to implement things effectively and competently so expanding their powers in areas where they really have little to no knowledge is a major risk in my book.

5. Less democratic
No realistic plan for community involvement or participatory planning.

It’s not rocket science. Participatory planning practices have been well implemented in major cities around the world, from Barcelona to
While partipatory planning hasn’t always been perfect and can also present as tokenistic (in Madrid, for example, it’s simply a portal where residents can vote “yes” or “no” on decisions without putting forward any qualitative suggestion.

However the LURB makes no mention of a shift to the post-2010 world. It feels outdated, uncreative and ineffective. One of the few elements of the current planning system that allows the public to make their voices heard is in planning consultations, and these are notoriously ineffective. With a bit of focus and attention, their format could easily be improved, upgraded, and better resourced to allow proper and effective community engagement.

All of this is ignored.

6. Quick-wins galore without addressing structural problems.
Which is indeed this government in a nutshell. This is largely what the design codes and new powers to auction leases for vacant properties on high streets is all about. As always, they prefer to address the symptom than the root cause and then wonders why everything continues to go to hell.

7. Where’s the money?
What I find most staggering is how the austerity agenda continues to permeate.
The new Bill puts so much additional pressure on council planning departments, who have already been decimated and stripped off much of their autonomy. There’s no mention of increasing resource, or training, or funding other than a bit of the new Infrastructure Levy fund which replaces CIL and S106. This is likely to be a tiny drop in the ocean in comparison with 1). The deep cuts and violently suppressed budgets of the past 12 years; 2). Scale and complexity of social, economic, political, and environmental crises facing the country; 3). Levels of responsibility and additional tasks forced on to local authorities.

Without properly taxing the rich and improving public spending to restore some form of adequate state (which currently functions as an outsourcing platform for a wild and unregulated profiteering private sector), we will sink deeper and deeper into the mire.

**************

TL:DR final words: Too shallow, too light, too vague and more undemocratic than ever before to make any real difference and certainly no antidote to our aged, anachronistic, fragmented and stretched planning system unfit for a modern state.

Spatial Planning in England: Act II

In terms of housing and planning, the hallmarks of the 12-year austere and increasingly blindly ideological Tory regime is a deep housing crisis, the removal of the right to a home as a basic human right, and a lack of mass, state-subsidised housing that has caused inequality to spiral in the UK. This is most visible in drastic increases in homelessness, but there is also a problem at the majority of people under 40, even with relatively decent (by post-2008 UK standards, so already lagging quite a bit behind those of France and Germany) salaries cannot afford to buy a home and are trapped in an unregulated and parasitic rental market with zero protection.

Undoubtedly this has got worse under Tory rule, but as discussed previously the problems began under Thatcher in her mass sell-off of Council-owned homes and the project was certainly exacerbated and continued under New Labour.

As outlined in my previous post, one thing I agree with the Tories, albeit for entirely different reasons, is that the UK planning system is broken. I radically disagree, however, with their proposed remedies for all the UK’s planning ailments. These are presented in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. As a side note, given our most recent governmental collapse I do imagine this will be shelved anyhow, and the Levelling Up agenda (and what little impact it has made so far) will be abandoned. But that’s a different story.

I’ll present the proposed planning solutions outlined in the LUR Bill, and then let’s take each one piece by piece.

1. New central powers implemented at the local level
Local Beauty
A nod towards vernacular architecture, whereby all local authorities would be required to have a design code in place covering their planning jurisdiction.

“The area-wide codes will act as a framework, for which subsequent detailed design codes can come forward, prepared for specific areas or sites and led either by the local planning authority, neighbourhood planning groups or by developers as part of planning applications. This will help ensure good design is considered at all spatial scales, down to development sites and individual plots.”

More streamlined decision-making
Local plans would be limited to locally specific matters, and key issues would be covered by national policies. I think this flies in the face of the whole decentralisation thing that is ostensibly at the heart of levelling up, but in principle I’m not against it. Certain things, like a real green energy policy, or net zero transition, or mass social housing require a national-level plan.

The problem is, our national level policymaking is inherently broken and policies are no longer made in the public interest. In practice then, this simply will not work to the benefit of the population.

Regional and local autonomy in decision making

The above seems to contradict other parts of the Bill, which stipulates that more weight will be given to neighbourhood plans and spatial development strategies proposed by Combined Authorities and Mayors. So, how does that play into key issues being covered only at national level? We need to understand then, what the Bill means by “key issues.”

Local authorities will also be allowed to quickly create supplementary plans for their areas (or part thereof). This means that local authorities will be able to quickly produce policies and designs for sites or whole areas rapidly.

New combined authorities created

Personally I think that the entire governance structure of the UK should not be relegated to a footnote in a planning bill but should be given its own entire department. But still, at least it recognises that the Combined Authority structure is designed for urban areas. The new Bill allows “upper tier” councils to combine (i.e. county level, often used for large but sparsely populated rural areas). Or as the Bill puts it:

“main difference between combined county authorities and combined authorities is the membership: a combined county authority must include one two-tier county council and at least one other upper tier county council or upper tier unitary authority (i.e. district councils cannot be members and do not consent to the forming of a combined county authority), whereas a combined authority has to include all the local authorities within the area it is to cover (i.e. in a two-tier area, the county council and all district councils must be members, and consent to the forming of the combined authority)”.

i.e: NAPOLEON!!!! WHERE ARE YOU?!!!!

2. More community

Street Votes
Under the new bill, there is a placeholder to add a clause to allow residents on a street would be allowed to propose developments on their street and hold a vote as to whether a proposed development should take place or not.

That might be a good suggestion in theory, but I would dread to think how it would actually play out IRL in bitter Britain of 2022….

Neighbourhood creation
The Bill introduces something called “a neighbourhood priorities statement” which provides communities with a “simpler and more accessible way to set out their key priorities and preferences for their local areas. Local authorities will need to take these into account, where relevant, when preparing their local plans for the areas concerned, enabling more communities to better engage in the local plan-making process”.

I’m not really sure what this means other than modernise local authorities planning portals. So far, I haven’t seen much evidence of this but there is a definite need for an upgrade to the 21st century.

Although, not entirely sure how this alone is supposed to magic up a cosy neighbourhood, community feel. I wonder if the Government simply do not understand the scale of the crisis the country, and especially the northern portion, is facing. It certainly feels like that.

Improved high streets
Local authorities could be granted new powers to instigate auctions to take leases on vacant high street properties.

It is certainly undeniable that our high streets are ailing, especially in Northern cities and outside of affluent areas. While leafy Surrey and Kent and Hampstead Garden Suburb etc. may be full of cutsey little boutiques and artisan bakeries, that is not the reality of much of the country. Even the betting shops, money lenders, pawnshops, poundlands, outdated newsagents and Greggs so ubiquitous on high streets in the immediate post-crash years, now even those are becoming scarce and replaced increasingly by empty, boarded up lots.

However, this is a quick and shallow fix to a much, much deeper problem. It’s no coincidence that high streets are dying in areas of the country where people can barely afford milk, bread, and cheese. They aren’t going to be buying cutsey little loaves, organic produce or handmade patisserie. The country has become poor and that is the fault of austerity politics peddled by this increasingly criminal and corrupt bunch and a total failure to address structural economic issues in our deindustrialised country by this dim-witted, greedy and unimaginative political class.

Council tax premium on second homes
“local authorities may levy a premium of up to an additional 100 per cent on council tax bills for second homes and for empty homes after one year (as opposed to two years which is the current requirement).”

In principle, fair enough. However, like closing loopholes or actually mapping out transparent land ownership structures, this pays lip service and I doubt the Tories would actually instigate anything. Also, there needs to be much more tightly regulated second home market and the Airbnbification of beauty spots, crippling local communities for example in the Lake District, is barely discussed in the UK (unlike, for example in Barcelona or Berlin). In the UK I would argue this is mainly a rural issue, and rural communities are facing dire consequences.

2. Improve transparency of land ownership and land use

Land control in England and Wales

Land control in all four corners of the United Kingdom is extraordinarily complicated. We never had a Napoleon to reform the land and standardise our system of governance. I would argue that the Domesday book, the first land census conducted in post-1066 (i.e after the Norman Conquest and the last time we were invaded, which has done all sorts of strange things to the British psyche and is one of the common explanations as to why our establishment are so weird and incompetent) was the last time any major attempt was made to map land ownership and understand how land is the wretched place is parcelled. We missed a trick with Cromwell in 1652, the English revolution more than a full century before the French Revolution and two before the Russian. It was a world first but we were too soon to be relevant, and to paraphrase a bunch of innovation-y motivational speaker-y type entrepreneurs (James Allworth and Howard Marks Google tells me), potentially stolen from an Italian politician (was it D’Alema?) and parroted by Ivanka Trump: too early is the same as being wrong.

So yes. Agreed. The United Kingdom is thirsty for land control.

But. The new bill is super vague and doesn’t stipulate how such a Herculean task would be undertaken:
The bill simply “includes measures that will facilitate a better understanding of who ultimately owns or controls land in England and Wales.” This supports a 2017 Housing White Paper commitment by “collecting and publishing data on contractual arrangements used by developers to control land, such as rights of pre-emption, options, and conditional contracts”.

Close Planning Loopholes
The Bill allegedly strengthens powers available to local authorities to enforce planning rules and laws. I am sceptical however: since when does this government do anything to close loopholes that ultimately benefit the propertied classes?

And: this country barely seems to have any laws, just recommendations and policies. Good luck enforcing those.

Amending the Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) system.
CPO allows local authorities to purchase parcels of land that may belong to private owner(s) to develop new infrastructure. This will be extended to include CPOs for regeneration, especially of brownfield land.

In theory, again, a welcome change, but very vague as to how it might be implemented beyond “changes to     publicity requirements around CPOs and how their inquiries are held.”

3. Nomenclature

Centralised government oversight of street names

Again, in a perfect world with a nice, benevolent state this could not be a bad thing. Seemingly, it stemmed from the BLM movement in 2020 and could be used to remove monuments, street names, and plaques which could be deemed offensive. All local authorities would need to follow the same process to change names in consultation with residents. So far, so good.

But based on the current government’s track record, it could be a bit scary. Do we really want Thatcher Avenues, von Hayek Streets and Ayn Rand Roads to pop up all over our cities? Removal of everything related to anything remotely left or anti-Tory, such as the move in Manchester to rid Manchester of its statue of Fredriech Engels?

Sounds to me like another strand of the concocted culture war of the right wing. Remove the slave owners, racists and colonisers, and be done with it.

4. Heritage

Listed parks and gardens
Registered parks and gardens would get the same planning protection as Listed Buildings. A bit Victorian, but fine by me. Increasing the amount of public space and making it more inclusive and democratic would help, but that’s another battle for another day.

5. Replacing EIA and SEA

A new post-Brexit “Environmental Outcomes Report.”
Since Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and Strategic Environmental Assessments (SEA) are EU processes, we will need to create our own. Given this government’s track record on the environment, and the fact that our rivers have gone from one of the cleanest in Europe to open sewers in a mere 12 years, I’m not holding my breath on what this might entail.

The bill states that it will “[…] for the first time, allow the government to reflect its environmental priorities directly in the decision-making process.”

Under this government, this scares me since their only consistent priority is…cutting corners and making money?

6. Cross-boundary working

Combined Authorities and Mayoralties working together

Groups of CAs could voluntarily coordinate spatial strategies across borders on specific cross-boundary issues. This might include net zero plans, or transport for example. This imbues the CAs with more decision-making and executive power than they have (which, let’s face it, is currently minimal).

Creation of Local-Led Urban Development Corporations

The UK Planning system, as mentioned previously, is notoriously patchy and contains relics of planning theories past (many of which have been since wholly discredited, particularly the 1960s fixation with building cities to accommodate cars and not much else). Accordingly, there are currently four types of development corporation:

               • New Town Development Corporation
               • Urban Development Corporation
               • Mayoral Development Corporation
               • local-led New Town Development Corporation.

Being the UK, as everything here all of these have different levels of power, cover different remits, and have differing priorities (Napoleon please come and save us!!)

This bill focuses on locally-led Urban Development Corporations, with the aim of regenerating the local area and accountable to local authorities rather than the central state.

This is welcome, but only on two conditions: firstly, if it replaces the fragmentary and piecemeal current status (which there’s no indication it will, unless I interpreted it incorrectly it seems the bill just introduces a new strand to the existing hotchpotch); and secondly, local authorities are given more money, resource, and expertise to adequately oversee the activities of the Urban Development Corporation. If it’s just yet another thing tagged on to councils already stretched to breaking point, forget it. 
                

7. Replacement of S106 and CIL with a new Infrastructure Levy.

Section 106 merits an entry in its own rite, and it has been abused supremely over the years especially by super rich developers. CIL, which is similar to S106 but includes an expanded range of infrastructure, is similar in nature. Developers are expert at dodging their responsibilities and giving back to society.

Therefore, I don’t think a new Infrastructure Levy will hold much water. The wording is worrying vague, as per usual: “There will also be “a process to require developers to deliver some forms of infrastructure that are integral to the design and delivery of a site”.

So, that summarises what the Bill contains. The next task it to work out what each of these proposals actually mean in practice. More to follow.

Spatial Planning in England: Act I

The modern planning system in England is rooted in the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act This established two important elements:

(i). a legal framework for development, where land ownership alone was not the sole condition required for development and planning permission needed to be sought and certain criteria met; and

(ii) institutional re-structuring to grant county and borough councils ownership of planning processes, based on local development plans aligned to a national strategic planning framework.

From its progressive roots, the English planning system since the late 1970s has undergone a significant paradigm shift. The state has taken an increasingly diminished role, making way for the market to lead, creating a tendency to sideline social and environmental outcomes.

A fundamental criticism of the English planning system is that it is cumbersome and opaque based around local development plans which are slow to prepare and even slower to implement. Lack of coherence and slow speed of implementation of Local Development Plans makes for a spatial planning system ill-equipped to respond to the challenges of the 21st century.

Legal standing

The spatial planning system in England today is guided top-down by the National Policy Planning Framework (NPPF), but local development plans, which are part of the Local Development Schemes which are a legal requirement for local authorities to produce following the 2004 Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, remain the cornerstone of implementation, albeit with plans for phase them out.

Local plans tend to be long, complex documents. For example, the Newcastle Local Plan consists of:
 1. 360-page Core Strategy and Urban Core Plan (CSUCP) for Gateshead and Newcastle 2010-2030.
2.147-page Development and Allocations Plan 2015-2030 (DAP).
3. 172-page appendices.


The overall result is a diluted and complex document from which it is difficult to obtain a tangible sense of what the spatial vision for the area seeks to achieve beyond economic prosperity.

Successive planning reforms (e.g. 1990, 1991, 2004, 2011, 2015, 2018, 2020) indicate that there is cross-party consensus that the spatial planning system, the NPPF and, by design, Local Development Plans is flawed. However, so far, planning reforms have been at best, incremental, and at worst, entrench existing issues.

The deeply fragmented, incoherent system means that English planners are tasked with achieving too many policy objectives with little resource in a flawed institutional system that is the highly centralised political system of England.  

The housing crisis rages on

The affordable housing crisis at the centre of the critique of the English planning system. The housing issue is structural and partially related to land ownership models in England, and partially due to the structure of the housing market which is over-dominated by large private developers with little interest beyond economic gain in the places in which they secure development rights.  

The failure to address the housing crisis is symptomatic of the incoherent, fragmented nature of English spatial planning. Planning and housing sectors would be well placed to work closely together to tackle the deep inequalities in English society and their impacts, as well as developing deliverable strategies to tackling climate change.

Until the affordable housing crisis is tackled through a radical redistribution of property-based wealth, the spatial planning system is unable to deliver meaningful impact in terms of integrating with other sector to address inequalities in cities.

Skeffington Report (1969)


The 1969 People and Planning (Skeffington Report) continues to provide the benchmark for engaging the British public in earlier on in the process of developing local development plans. In response to the highly centralised planning system framed by the 1947 TPCA, the 1968 amendment mandated that planning authorities must share local development plans with the public, provide an opportunity for affected residents respond. In line with the discretionary, common-law system which shapes public life in Britain, the new recommendations provided no legal grounds or details in how they could be implemented. It was therefore the responsibility of local authorities to interpret the public participation amendment how they saw fit, leading to uneven results.

While the Skeffington Report did make mention of increasing engagement with the planning system by people from underrepresented groups, it did not mention exactly who, or how (Community Planning Toolkit, 2016). This continues to be vital for the modern planning system to overcome, given that the majority of public engagement is with people over 55 and 56% of people in England have never engaged with the planning system at all.

While available data lacks granularity of ethnicity of those engaged in the planning system in England, an ethnographic data shows that even in a London borough where 54% of the population are not white, planning consultation meetings were almost entirely white, the planners and developers themselves were white, and all of the people in the rendering of proposed developments were white. When this is placed in the context of 37% of black people in England having no access to a garden, balcony, or outdoor space (ONS, 2020), it makes the failure of the planning to engage those who are most likely to rely on public parks and green spaces for their leisure time even more startling.

While local politicians have the right to vote on new planning developments, as in the current system, the planning system in England will remain highly politicised. Planning committees are responsible for passing local planning decisions, but they are constituted of elected councillors who often have limited knowledge of planning systems.

Impact of austerity on planning

Spatial planning preparations and development delivery and implementation at local level have been constrained by local authorities a decade of austerity measures, which the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimated for planning departments by 2015 was around a cumulative average of 45%. With such limited resources for a time-consuming and resource intensive activity as community engagement, it is of little surprise then that Local Development Plan formulation is estimated by the RTPI to have a 1% public rate of engagement, and the participation in the individual planning process is estimated to be at 3%. These figures, coupled with inability of councillors to genuinely represent a cross-section of interests in their local constituencies, highlight a serious problem of democracy and participation in the England planning system.

Discretionary planning systems

Discretionary planning means that central government sets guidance, policies, and visions for how planning will be implemented by regional and local tiers of government, but local authorities have a large degree of discretion on how these translate into reality through formulation of local development plans.

Discretionary systems are characterised by overlapping planning and policy systems often involving different processes or aims, and it is the role of planning departments to interpret these aims to inform negotiations over final planning decisions. This contrasts with the codification of statutory systems.

An effective spatial planning system should be able to merge the benefits of a discretionary system, where flexibility allows the planning system to respond to changes in circumstances and place-specific conditions, with the consistency and predictability of the planning outcomes of a regulatory planning system. The Planning for the Future Reforms published in 2020 recognise that the English discretionary planning system in its current guise is flawed, and opened the prospect of implementing a zoning system of sorts in the English planning system.

Section 106

Progressive aims of the TCPA 1947 manifested in nationalised development rights for land use. Consecutive reforms since 1979 have increasingly returned to the pre-1947 system of land ownership concentrated in the hands of a minority of private individuals. The concept of “planning gains,” an ostensibly mitigating factor, was introduced by the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 under Section 106, where local authorities could exercise the right to benefit from selling land to developers by capturing the difference between land value and its uplift as a developable site. The logic was that this gain could then be used to fund public infrastructure (libraries, parks, social housing). However, while this initially appears to be a progressive amendment, it does not always achieve socially progressive outcomes. In a recent example, the Nine Elms developers in London used the S106 clause to fund a new tube station under the guise of constructing a new station as a public good. Whether a new tube station is needed in an area of London that mostly consists of luxury apartments during an ongoing and chronic housing affordability crisis remains highly dubious.

PDs

Permitted Development rights (PDs) are a feature of the English planning system where planning proposals meeting specific criteria do not require planning permission. The logic is to ease the pressure on the housing market by making it easier to “flip” buildings to residential usage with minimal bureaucracy. However, this unfettered approach to planning continues to place pressure on local authorities who are required to spend limited time and resource in verifying whether developments met the criteria for PDs, and producing certification to prove their status. It has not reduced the burden on planning departments. This is one example of unsustainable solutions to avoid what is really required to address the housing crisis: rent controls and adequate state intervention, i.e. a significant spend to increase the mass supply of affordable housing as those seen in the 1950s-70s.

Summary

The English spatial planning system is deeply flawed. While it does reflect a flawed and difficult wider political context, there are some measures that can be taken to improve the situation. While the Planning for the Future White Paper set out by the Government in 2020 recognises these flaws, there has been no mention of preventing misuse of S106 agreements and the remedies it does put forward, particularly pertaining to improving public participation and tackling spatial inequality provoked by English land use laws, are inadequate.

Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing (review, part 1)

Given the centrality of housing as the centrepiece of British socio-political reality, Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing is far more than a simple audit and historical account of the trajectory of social housing spanning over a century. Viewed through the lens of social housing, John Boughton provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of housing as a response to the changing social and political conditions of Britain. The big questions of the day are often reflected in the government’s responses to the challenge of housing its people. The Municipal Dreams journey departs from the early Victorian-era disease-ridden slums where life, for most, was, to quote Hobbes’ Leviathan “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” through to the golden age of socialist thought rising from the ashes of two brutal world wars, to the late 20th century project of “rolling back the state,” privatisation of state assets, financial deregulation and push to the free market and its somewhat tragic consequences, the embodiment of which are reflected in the charred remains of Grenfell Tower.

This fascinating project to trace the noble origins and development of social housing in Britain stemmed from four years of blogging, which is in fact still very much alive and well at Municipal Dreams. Much of the material in the book derives from ethnographic sources, which affords Boughton a level of intimacy not seen (to my limited knowledge) in any other literature spanning such a broad range of council estates. It also allows Boughton to encompass an insider’s perspective and avoids the lack of objectivity that befalls many accounts of working-class culture using a more distant, participatory observation approach.

The book is organised chronologically, with three discernible phases:

1. Philanthropy, morality and Victorian values: Britain’s first council estate, the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch which was completed in 1900, was constructed as a direct response from the appalling conditions of the slum quarter in London’s East End. Multiple accounts, from novels such as Arthur Morrison’s A Child of the Jago referenced in the first chapter of Municipal Dreams, Charles’ Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, to historical accounts and ethnographies including Jack London’s The People of the Abyss, also referred to in Benjamin Disraeli’s Sybil, and Friedrich Engels’ The Great Towns offered stark descriptions of the criminality, abject poverty, death, and disease in these miserable human rookeries. This misery was the downside of the first ever Industrial Revolution. The work of empiricists such as Engels, and later Thomas Carlyle, informed embryonic ideas for developing the welfare state. These ideas were brought forward by philanthropic individuals and loosely bound “corporations” which would later crystallise and formalise into local councils embedded within the institutional architecture of the British state.

2. The impact of war: The first world war gave rise, both directly and indirectly, to the world’s first mass council housing building programme. In 1919, Lloyd George promised “homes for heroes” and following the 1919 Housing and Town Planning Act, over the next two decades, 1.1 million council homes were built (pg 31). This gained support from both left and right wing of the political spectrum, albeit on differing grounds. The right, especially, feared the revolutions and Bolshevism sweeping across mainland Europe and believed that providing council housing would sweeten and disarm would-be revolutionaries. Following the war, it was tacitly agreed that a fit, healthy, and strong population was desirable and providing good-quality housing seemed one logical way to do this. The interwar period and the Great Depression saw large-scale slum clearances, where for the first time the poorer working class were brought into council housing.

From 1945, under Clement Attlee there was a concerted effort to rebuild and rebirth the nation following a catastrophic first half of the twentieth century. The welfare state was born, and housing was a large part of this. At this time, socialist thought defined post-war Britain. The NHS was created, access to education expanded, and the dominant ideology gave rise to the idea that council housing was for a prosperous, economically active, and aspirational working class (pg 256).

3. Demonisation and privatisation: From 1979 onwards, Britain was remodelled once again. The post-1945 consensus was replaced with free market ideals of shrinking the state and selling off state-owned assets. This included council housing. While national companies were being sold off at an alarming rate, council housing stock was transferred from state ownership to private hands or to third-party public-private entities and housing associations for ideological reasons. This included the expanded Right to Buy introduced in 1980. Meanwhile, rhetoric and discourse peddled by government, the national press and free-market think tanks such as Institute for Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute ensured that council estates and their inhabitants were stigmatised. Social housing is today the preferred term for those working in the housing sector, due not in small part to the negative connotations attached to the term “council housing” and “council estate.” Municipal dreams is not party political work, but it certainly seeks to bring to the fore the social origins of council housing and the critical role the Labour movement played in ensuring access to decent and affordable housing. These principles have been very much eroded in recent decades, but not all hope is lost. We may reach a turning point once again. Or then, things might become ever more entrenched.

I will elaborate further on these musings a bit later.