But why is this spate of rural housebuilding happening at all? And what-if anything, can be done to counter these schemes?
(London Going Out of Town by Cruikshank 1829, reflects the perianal concern and anxiety many have felt in regard to the destruction of the countryside and overdevelopment)
WAG LDP
This
wave of house building was initially prompted by the Welsh Assembly Government
(WAG) who decreed that all councils in Wales must create a Local Development
Plan (LDP) in order to set out land use policies. Population growth projections
and a dearth of ‘affordable’ homes are what is driving the efforts of the Vale
of Glamorgan Council (VOG) to build thousands of new houses on greenfield land
throughout the Vale of Glamorgan.
Policies
MG1 and SP3 of the Vale of Glamorgan’s LDP ‘identifies a housing requirement
of 9460 new dwellings’. This requirement figure is based upon the Welsh
Assembly Government’s population projections for the Vale of Glamorgan up to
2026 (LDP, Written Statement 2017, pp 56).
At
the time that the LDP was adopted by the Vale of
Glamorgan Council in 2017, housing projections by the WAG
were projected
to be at around 5000 which
was increased to 9460 by the Vale of Glamorgan Council. Despite the efforts of a number of
Plaid councillors to get the number 9460 reduced to something approaching a
sensible and pragmatic figure, their amendment was defeated by the Labour run
Vale Council.
Population Growth
The
population figures, and thus the housing numbers poised within the VOG’s LDP
can be challenged as according to figures released by the National Office of
Statistics in 2019, fewer than 30,000 babies were born in Wales, the lowest
number in the last one-hundred years. 2020 figures show a further decline to
28,661 births, twenty percent less than 2010 (www.ons.gov.uk). With falling
birth-rates in Wales and indeed Britain, this population growth appears to be
in a large part driven by migration and predicted migration. The housing
numbers to accommodate population growth would appear to be little more than a
self-fulfilling prophecy, as if the houses are built, then people will surely
come, many of whom will likely be out of town buy-to-let investors rather than
local people.
Many
who are concerned by this grossly exaggerated housing number including Plaid,
Liberal Democrat and Conservative councillors, as well as a good number of
independent councillors and a great number of Vale residents, such as the five
thousand people who signed a petition against the Upper Cosmeston Farm
development, have called for houses to be built according to local need and for
the Vale Council to protect greenfield sites. All pleas have seemingly been
dismissed as the LDP has been doggedly and dogmatically pursued by various
planning departments within South Wales.
Housing Crisis Myth
A term we hear often now days, thrown around in
particular by those with vested interests in housebuilding, is ‘housing crisis’. This alarmist term refers
to the apparent dearth of housing, in particular that of what are called
‘affordable’ or ‘first time buyer homes’, available to people wishing to take
their first steps on the property ladder. This chronic dearth is purported to
be because supply cannot keep up with demand-the idea that homes in Britain are
expensive simply because there are not enough homes to go around. As we have
seen above the population growth in Wales, and indeed Britain, is declining. This
reasoning plays a large role in the formation of the current LDP housing
figures.
Research by Bank of England researchers John Lewis
and Fergus Cumming in ‘Houses are assets not goods-taking the theory to the
UK data’, however has thoroughly dismantled the widely held falsehood of
supply and demand being the cause of a ‘housing crisis’ and has shown that high
house prices have actually been driven by finance. Low interest rates are the
real cause of all real house price rises since the early 2000’s. Housing stock
levels have constantly risen at a higher rate than population growth since at
least the 1990’s when the average house price was only 3.6 more than the
average salary. Now the average house price is around eight times the average
national salary (Positivmoney,org).
Discussion-or lack of
There
is a very important discussion to be had regarding
the causes of first
time buyers being unable to get on the property ladder, which includes as shown above, the role of
finance, but also in direct relation to this is the ‘buy to let’ market, which has removed a great
number of lower priced homes from the reach of first-time buyers. The so-called ‘rent trap’,
triggered in part due to intense competition amongst tenants also
plays its part, which essentially keeps young people
off the housing ladder by the high rents that private landlords often charge
for accommodation, which in turn leaves very little money left to save up for a
mortgage deposit.
Add
to this the fact that
many people who are stuck in the rant-trap earn below the national average
wage, but especially those who struggle on minimum wage with part time contracts,
or worse, on zero-hour contracts, have virtually no-chance of becoming home
owners, even if a slew of so-called ‘affordable homes’ were built next to every
town and village throughout the Vale of Glamorgan. It therefore seems
to the authors of this article wholly simplistic
and
erroneous to believe that we as a nation
can simply build our way out of this
problem, as unless we address the root causes of the dearth of ‘affordable
housing’, the symptoms will assuredly persist in perpetuity until the
underlying issues are addressed. In short, the supply and demand explanation for
the phantom ‘housing crisis’, is essentially one giant, stinky red-herring, and
one that favours housing developer’s ambition to access green belt land.
Affordable pretext
It
is
interesting to note that a
great number of the newbuilds, over fifty percent, that have been constructed
within the Vale of Glamorgan since the LDP was first adopted are not
‘affordable’ and represent the higher end of the market. The affordable
houses angle played a large part of the justification for the current LDP. If houses are to be built,
it is affordable houses, preferably on brownfield land that should be a priority to
address local need rather than luxury/executive
homes to provide developers with profits. Developers though as we
know, do not like building these types of ‘affordable’ homes, as there is far
more profit in executive style homes.
Houses are more important?
We
often hear a plethora of mantras and platitudes thrown around by proponents of
controversial housing development proposals in an attempt to claim the moral
imperative such as ‘this is progress’, ‘we are doing this for your
children’, ‘we need houses’, ‘only two percent of Britain is
built upon’ ‘if you want green-fields, go down Porthkerry’ etc. Such
reductive red-herring arguments are of course easily
dismantled but the gist is the same, and that is ultimately reflected in the
concluding statement of any planning documents, which paraphrased goes
something like, ‘weighed up against the needs of the development, houses are
more important’.
This
final assertion is a very existential issue, and indeed a personal one, for one
needs to ask, more important to whom? The housing developers-who although often
feel the need to lament falling gains, make a great deal of money constructing
often deficient, ugly, badly built and tightly packed in homes. Indeed,
hard-nosed profits, dividends and bonuses are the primary concern of any
housing development company. Barratt's for example saw a boost in annual
profits by nearly two thirds in 2020-2021 with chief executive David Thomas
reporting "excellent progress". Persimmon CEO Jeff Fairburn in 2018
was the recipient of a much criticised 110 million pound bonus. The local
authority and councillors, who often seem misguided and ignorant in their decisions to give
assent to develop land, or the local residents who are almost always subject
to appeal to authority, dismissed with red-herring and ad-hominem arguments,
fobbed-off or just ignored altogether.
Lack of Community input in the planning process
In
the words of Plaid councillor Chris Franks, ‘Plaid considers that the (VOG
LDP) consultation process to have been a cynical exercise. Ordinary people were
encouraged to spend time and effort making submissions only to be dismissed out
of hand’. Indeed, this is what appears to happen during each and every
planning meeting, notably that of Model Farm Rhoose, whereby resident’s
concerns were essentially dismissed in favour of the aprioristic beliefs of
certain councillors and officers, and the partisan nature of the many reports with their technical sophistry (with
the exception of the deliberately hidden viability report). In fact, the authors of this article are struggling to think of a
single precedent whereby the public’s written objections were actually taken
onboard and acted upon. Not one. This tells us everything we need to know about
how local resident’s concerns are imputed during the planning process. Not at
all. The
whole process appears to be nothing more than a sop. This lack of meaningful input, in our opinion, has
to change.
The
assertion that ‘houses are more important’ is more often than not, not shared
by those who ultimately have to bear the brunt and fallout of the new housing
estate, viz increased traffic and congestion and the character of their
communities irrevocably changed, most often in rural settings, and always for the worse with habitat,
biodiversity and flora and fauna bulldozed away. Retaining a few trees and
hedgerows as mitigation or ‘softening’ is a very poor trade.
Climate and nature emergencies-a new material
consideration?
Both
the Welsh Assembly Government and the Vale of Glamorgan Council in 2019
declared a ‘climate emergency’ and in 2021 a ‘nature emergency’.
It is interesting to note that the preservation of valuable agricultural land
and precious green spaces it seems does not form a pressing part of action regarding
these emergencies, although this would appear to be by far in a way the most
pragmatic course of action to take, especially considering that the UK is
heavily reliant upon importing food from abroad. Up to two thirds of the land
needed to produce Britain’s food lies abroad meaning that we cannot grow enough
produce to feed ourselves (populationmatters.org).
A good chance for the WAG to show that they are
serous with their climate and nature emergency policies would be
to call-in the proposed development of Lower Cosmeston Farm. But no. The WAG
Climate Change Minister Julie James has stated that this development is
required to meet ‘new and demanding net zero carbon living standards’.
It is challenging to think how a likely additional five hundred cars would meet
this new net zero carbon standard. And in a cringing non-sequitur,
this development was said to be helping to create a ‘greener Wales’. Go figure.
Conclusion
Do we still need new houses built? Certainly, it
would be desirable to increase the stock of social housing on brownfield land
yes, and in exceptional circumstances greenfield land. Houses are of course important, but as the
research has shown, the so-called housing crisis is little more than a myth,
perpetuated in particular by the development lobby. There is no real shortage
of houses. House price inflation, and its causes, is the real culprit behind
the inability of many aspiring property owners to get on the property ladder
not so much supply and demand.
In
view of the burgeoning overpopulation of Britain and its environmental
ramifications, the dearth of land needed to grow our own food and addressing
the root causes of the chronic shortage of affordable homes, i.e., house
price inflation, buy-to-let,
the rent trap and a massively increasing population, sensible and pragmatic
thinking is needed now in the twenty first century rather than the simplistic, and
quite frankly-wicked, developer
orientated ‘development over all’ approach we have seen time and time again. Make no
mistake. Their covetous gaze is fixed directly on our precious greenbelt land,
and they are coming.
What
we need is the right houses in the right places-i.e., preferably brownfield
sites, and ultimately to address the underlying causes of the lack of
affordable houses. Sweden provides a good example of how to do this with
effective legislature regarding housing as the rents private landlords can
charge are capped and buy-to-let bank-business loans for individual apartments
and houses are not permitted. There is no so called ‘housing crisis’ in Sweden.
These
would seem to be pragmatic measures by which to help address the root causes of
young people’s difficulty of owning a home. And until such time as our
government and local authorities begin to address the root causes of the dearth
of affordable housing and to understand what real progress is in regard to the
preservation of the natural environment, the destruction of our precious green
spaces will seemingly continue unabated.
Mark and
Jonathan Lambert are archaeology graduates of Cardiff University and are published
authors. They have been writing about and researching local history for the
past 20 years and have a wealth of knowledge. All articles are original
compositions - we hope you enjoy our content. Enquiries: hiddenglamorgan@outlook.com
©Jonathan and Mark Lambert 2023
The right of Jonathan and Mark Lambert to be identified as Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be reprinted, reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic means, including social media, or mechanical, or by any other means including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the authors.
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