Homes plan sets Osborne, PM against ‘nimby’ Tories

Guardian News and Media/London

David Cameron and George Osborne face a divisive battle with Conservative town halls over their £15bn plan to fuel a housebuilding boom after a new “nimby index” revealed that eight out of 10 Tory councillors believe their areas are already overdeveloped or fine the way they are.

In the wake of the chancellor’s budget announcements aimed at boosting housebuilding, a poll by ComRes revealed that only a quarter of councillors from all parties believe their local areas are underdeveloped, while 87% of the public can be classed as “nimbys”.

The extent of “not in my back yard” resistance to development emerges soon after Osborne introduced incentives for developers to build new homes by creating a £3.5bn scheme for interest-free loans to be available to buyers of such properties from next month.

Ministers have also relaxed planning rules limiting construction on greenfield sites.

The Lincolnshire constituency of the combative Planning Minister, Nick Boles, who once suggested building on 2%-3% of Britain’s currently open land, represents one part of the emerging conflict between local and national politics.

A plan to build 7,000 new homes in Grantham was agreed in 2010 but the first 50 to 70 will not be completed until spring 2014 - meaning that the council has missed the target Boles himself set for finding sites amid widespread public opposition.

Nationally, Tory council leaders have complained to Boles about housing targets that are “out of scale” and fear defeat at the polls if they are forced to build against their electors’ wishes.

Conservative-controlled Stratford-on-Avon council will take the government to the high court in the summer over its decision to overrule the council’s refusal of an 800-home development on fields close to the cottage of Shakespeare’s wife, Anne Hathaway.

“We understand the scale of development that our communities can absorb, and they don’t,” said Chris Saint, the Tory council leader. “If you put big estates into small communities you either create a soulless dormitory or sink estates of the kind that successive governments have struggled to disentangle. I do not want that to be my legacy.”

ComRes, which polled more than 400 councillors nationwide, found that 83% believed their areas were already overdeveloped.

Of Liberal Democrat councillors polled, 84% said their areas were overdeveloped or fine as they are. The figure for Labour was 59%.

People living in the south-west, West Midlands and Scotland appear most resistant to development, while Wales and the north-east are least opposed.

And 90% of the suburban public surveyed were classed as ‘nimbys’, compared with 88% in the countryside and 83% in urban areas.

The survey’s sponsor, Development Intelligence which has lobbied for clients including the housebuilder Countryside Properties and the commercial developer Hammerson said the findings indicated “a complete disconnect as neither public nor councillors understand that development creates growth and jobs”.

Nick Keable, its chief executive, said: “We support the government’s pro-development policy, but they have no idea how to implement it in a ‘nimby’ nation. Negativity about development is driven by the haves, not the have-nots. Where there is deprivation and high unemployment people are more positively disposed than they are in the leafy, suburban south-east.”

The number of households is expected to grow by an average of 232,000 a year in the next two decades, but just 146,420 homes were built in the last financial year.

Boles has accused councils of dragging their feet in allocating sites and last week told developers he wanted to “flush out” areas that do not offer up enough land.

He declined the Guardian’s requests to comment but Bob Neill, former planning minister and now deputy chairman of the Conservative party, responded by attacking Development Intelligence as “shadowy development lobbyists” and said the survey was “a crude attempt to smear local councillors who stand up for local residents”.