Week 7 - Developer-led building targets won’t fix the housing crisis here

The housing crisis in Teignbridge and in wider Devon has been out of control for years. From affordability issues to second homes, the previous Conservative Government did nothing to help the issues that local people face. 

Just like the Conservatives, Labour is pushing ‘top down’ targets and the construction of new homes by private developers as the solution. However continuing this approach will not address the underlying issues affecting local residents.

Simply asking big developers to solve the housing crisis by making houses cheaper is like asking a gold miner to dig up more nuggets to reduce the price of gold. It’s just not going to happen.

It isn’t a lack of planning application approvals that is the problem either. Last time I checked there were some 1 Million unbuilt planning approvals in this country.  Developers will only build houses when they can sell them at the prices they want, given what they have paid, or overpaid, for the land.

Local wages in Teignbridge are often lower than the national average. The national average is £33,000 per year while the local average is £27,612 per year. This makes it difficult for residents to afford new homes even if more are built. 

Increasing the number of houses without building new infrastructure—such as roads, schools, healthcare, and public transport—will strain our local services to breaking point.

With dentist waiting lists having been reported as ‘years long’, roads crumbling, people waiting weeks for a GP appointment, how are these services going to cope?

The current planning system has simply not resulted in enough of the homes the area needs.  The process is driven by land put forward by developers, with plans to maximise the profit from that land.  The system includes ensuring that developer ‘viability’ is maintained by allowing them to drop affordable housing to maintain their profit margin. 

Councils have their hands tied trying to get developers to build enough of the houses that locals need.  Developer ‘viability’ is helped by building larger, more expensive houses, and fewer (if any) affordable homes to sell at a discounted rate to housing associations for renting.

Adding more unaffordable houses is not going to solve anything for locals who cannot afford to buy a house.  Nor will it provide new homes to rent, and the developers aren’t providing enough homes for the housing associations - we have three separate housing crises at once.

Local authorities need greater powers to tackle the excesses of big developers and to force them to build the infrastructure that our communities need. They need the powers to end land banking, and most importantly have the funding to build more council houses themselves. 

I’m incredibly proud of the Liberal Democrat Teignbridge Council and how we have started building genuinely affordable social housing under the Teignbridge 100 plan and only last week gave the go ahead to another 23 homes. 

Give local authorities the resources they need and they can genuinely deliver the homes that local people need.