John Prescott famously announced on 18 July 2002: “We need more homes where people want to live, near where they work, in the north and in the south, at a price that people can afford, and in a way that protects the countryside.”
The best that the government has done is to talk about accelerating the planning process, and to instruct local authorities to release additional land for development.
The Treasury is conscious of the problems that are facing them and asked former CBI economic adviser Kate Barker to investigate the problem in a joint project with the ODPM. At first sight it appears to be a noteworthy document. Certainly, the executive summary looks impressive. However, as you plough through the detail, it quickly becomes apparent that the team who prepared the report must have contained a large number of economists and civil servants. They discuss a range of matters in isolation without, apparently, understanding the realities of the market or the construction industry.
The idea that all you have to do is zone more land for housing, accelerate the planning process and change the tax regime can only be described as naïve. The whole market is so distorted that a little tweaking here and there will not make any significant difference. Probably the best clue to the reality of the Barker Review is in the first report dated 10 December 2003 . This tells us that:
● population growth and household formation compared with current build rates implies a shortfall of 39,000 homes pa (and that this has been going on for 20 years);
● to keep affordability for new households in line with the 1980s implies a shortfall of 93,000 to 146,000 homes pa;
● reducing the long-term trend in house prices to 1.1% would imply a shortfall of 145,000 homes pa;
● reducing the long-term trend in house prices to zero would imply a shortfall of 240,000 homes pa.
Having drawn this conclusion, the Barker Review then says of the Sustainable Communities plan:
“The government has recognised that recent house building levels have not been at the optimal level. An extra 200,000 homes by 2016 have been proposed over and above those planned in the RPG figures. This total will be supplied in the four identified growth areas. The review welcomes this plan.”
It would be possible to see hope in the Barker Review if it had said: “The best that the Sustainable Communities plan will deliver is 200,000 homes over 13 years or 15,400 pa, although the reality will probably be closer to half that number because the brown land is not available in the quantities that were envisaged, the infrastructure is not in place, and the prices will be so high that most of the population could never afford to buy them. Plus they are in the wrong place. Conclusion: the whole notion is a complete waste of time.”
But then the Barker Review is a government report.
Property in short supply
An important question is why has the lack of sensibly priced houses suddenly become apparent. Crudely, the cost of borrowing went down and so the amount that people were prepared to borrow went up. However, this had an effect only because property was in short supply. The point is that everything that can be used as a dwelling has been used. We have reached the point where nothing easy is left and it now makes commercial sense to develop sites that would have seemed nonsensical only 10 years ago.
In the near future, there may be more than 2m people wanting homes in the South East. This means that at least 500,000 homes need to be built above and beyond existing production levels. The point, which no politician is prepared to admit, is just what this represents. If these homes were to be built as a Victorian terrace it would be 2,000 miles long or almost three times the distance from John O’Groats to Land’s End. It would mean finishing four miles per week for 10 years or almost one mile every working day. The only way that this rate of production can be achieved is on large greenfield sites with mass production techniques.
A typical Victorian home required a plot 6m x 30m including the adjacent road. This equates to 50 homes per ha, which is what the government says it wants. Half a million homes would occupy 10,000ha or 100 square kilometres. Transport infrastructure, schools, hospitals, trunk services, offices, power stations, water treatment, shops and factories plus existing woods and homes and so on could double that area. Two hundred square kilometres is equal to 77 square miles.
So, where do you build the new homes? Spreading them across the South East, as the government wants, would mean destroying what is left of the countryside. Concentrating homes in one place and providing them with new infrastructure would protect the bulk of the countryside and the global environment. It would also make it possible to build a community with an entirely new infrastructure instead of stretching the existing systems beyond their breaking point.
Where is it possible to build 500,000 new homes in one place? In the west of London it would cause flooding and the transport infrastructure is overloaded. To the north and south of London the transport infrastructure is already collapsing and a suburban sprawl would result.
The only area that can accommodate a large new settlement is north-west Kent in the Dartford, Gravesend and Swanley area. Much of this area is already covered by Thames Gateway. It is close to London and has the basis of a good transport infrastructure already in place. More importantly, it is topographically constrained by the Thames, the North Downs and the River Medway. The site will never flood or cause flooding elsewhere, and will not be suffer from settlement. Being a greenfield site, it would be quick and cheap to develop and cause far less damage to the environment than developing brownfield sites. Building on low-lying wet ground would mean that electric pumps would have to run day and night. Increasingly, massive flood defences would have to be built and maintained forever.
The secret to building successful communities is to provide good transport infrastructure to get people to the existing jobs. The secret of an expanded Thames Gateway is that there are several existing railways that run through the area. These can be converted into a series of circle lines with no mixing of fast and slow trains, as at present. This super commuter rail system would be delivered by transferring approximately 120 miles of existing track to an independent operator to completely rebuild as well as constructing another 75 miles of new track. The system would move 800,000 people a day and still have 20% spare capacity for unexpected difficulties. With a return fare of £5 per day, the rail company would have an income of well over £750m pa. The same company could also provide the local tram system, which would wind through the housing areas.
The cost of the local roads would be added to the dwellings. The motorways would be supplied by a company awarded a franchise for a long-distance toll road linking Ashford and Birmingham via a new crossing over the Thames to the east of Gravesend and Tilbury.
One big advantage of a new town would be the new reservoirs and water mains, which would reduce wastage. New sewers and sewage disposal plant would make it possible to recycle water by, for example, using “grey” water to flush toilets. Similarly, domestic waste recycling would be integral from day one. Local power generation and area heating schemes would be much less wasteful than the current policy of generating electricity hundreds of miles from where it is needed, and then watching it vanish along the cables.
Building big in one place would save huge amounts of energy. In the new town, each home would take half the energy to build and the inhabitants would consume half as much energy every year thereafter. The loss of a few fields would be insignificant when compared to this saving in greenhouse gas emissions.
A single large site built on the coast would have enormous logistical advantages. Bulk materials would arrive by sea and stay on site. There would be no need to move materials on the public highway. Much of the bulky material would be produced on site. Timber components could easily be manufactured on site in new factories. Waste would be quickly recycled because recovery and manufacturing plants would be co-located.
Home production lines
On a large project, specialist GPS-controlled machines would prepare the foundations, while the homes themselves would be fully assembled on computerised production lines. At present, there is no whole house factory assembly in the UK, only kits that need to be assembled on site. On a very large site, houses could be assembled in factories and moved into place without width restrictions.
The government has committed itself to “giving everyone the opportunity of a decent home”. The reality is that most of the population under the age of 30 will never have the opportunity to own their own home unless something changes very quickly.
Steve Scrivens ran a series of advertisements in national newspapers proposing a new town and was interviewed the 23 November 2002 issue of EG. Contact him at steve@hydrotechnology.net
