CONSERVATIVE PARTY CONFERENCE: Home owners should not accept something being next door that devalues their home and should have a right to protest against new developments, says Tom Tugendhat, MP for Tonbridge and Malling.
Tugendhat said that the seizing or appropriation of an asset was not conservative and NIMBYism was being misinterpreted just because people were protecting their assets.
“It’s wrong because it’s un-conservative, uneconomic and goes against the culture that is so fundamentally British,” he said at a packed fringe event.
Tugendhat said people have the right “To say that your principal asset, this home you have invested in, should not be devalued by hideousness next door.
“You do have a right to say that things that go near it should add to the value.”
The Policy Exchange run event – Building More by Building Beautiful – included housing minister Kit Malthouse on the panel.
While many Conservative MPs at the conference have stressed the need for the party to broaden its housing offer to win back voters, the event showed the the party still faces opposition among its grass roots members.
Malthouse said the government is trying to signal through the planning system that design matters.
“I have joked in my own constituency that if you want to get through planning quickly put a thatched roof on,” he said.
“We want local authorities to be assertive about designs in their local plans but then also to have the tools to encourage it through the planning system.
“We know acceptability rises and people are much more willing to accept large scale housing… if it has a beauty to it,” he said.
Sir Robin Wales, the former Labour mayor of Newham who was ousted by a momentum-backed candidate Rokhsana Fiaz earlier this year, said there are two types of NIMBYs: traditional types on the green belt and those asking why new development in an area is not for them.
“Housing has to be high quality, but it’s not enough to be just about design,” he said.
“We have to build good places and we have to make them places where people want to live.”
“That comes back to the issue of NIMBYism… That is how you persuade people to develop, you persuade them by building good quality things people want to live in,” he said.
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