Burnham’s housing plans: a partial fix

Andy Burnham’s government is putting housing closer to the centre of the national agenda. The package taking shape has two main limbs: the biggest council housebuilding drive since the post-war period, and new powers for metro mayors to call in large planning decisions, direct approve or refuse, and in some cases grant upfront permission so work can start without a conventional application. The call-in threshold is reported at schemes of more than 150 homes, large commercial floorspace, or buildings of about ten storeys. Mayors would also gain more influence over Homes England funding and the ability to levy development for infrastructure. A consultation is due shortly.

Those moves are serious. They should be judged against the problems we have already set out on this site — not against a slogan about “nimby councils” or a single national target.

What is broken

English planning systematically favours constraint, delay and under-delivery. Local politicians face concentrated electoral costs from new homes and only weak, often temporary, fiscal rewards. The discretionary system maximises negotiation and the power of organised local opposition. Strategic allocations are sometimes scaled into a “Goldilocks” zone: large enough to trigger a secondary school and a major highway or river crossing, too small to fund them efficiently. Affordable housing and layered regulation act as front-loaded, negotiable costs that hit marginal sites and smaller builders hardest. Green Belt policy is treated as a political totem rather than a calibrated tool. Permissions do not automatically become completions. And on the portals themselves, supportive comments are vanishingly rare while objections are not.

Our coherent package was therefore not “build anything, anywhere”. It was: give councils a permanent financial stake in growth; shift growth areas toward clearer rules and permission-in-principle; make infrastructure and affordable-housing obligations viable and transparent; use development corporations for the largest sites; review low-quality Green Belt on evidence; cut cumulative regulatory load; run a mixed public and private delivery model; and mobilise ordinary people to write in support so the file is not one-sided.

Where Burnham helps

Mayoral call-in and upfront permission for larger schemes are a real counterweight to committee-level refusal of strategic housing. That is closer to our argument for less re-fighting of every big application, even if the power is hierarchical discretion rather than zoning. A development levy in mayoral hands can support infrastructure funding if it is designed as transparent cost recovery rather than another opaque tax. A serious council-house programme on vacant public land addresses the mixed-delivery gap the private volume market will not fill alone, and it speaks directly to waiting lists and the “housing trap” of chasing private rents through the benefits system. Naming organised local opposition as a delivery problem matches the diagnosis that silence on the portal is not neutrality.

Where it falls short

First, fiscal incentives for the councils that still write local plans remain weak. Mayors gain leverage; districts and boroughs still face the political pain of growth without a lasting share of the upside. Without permanent retention of a meaningful slice of council-tax base growth or local land-value share, the public-choice problem is only partly relocated, not solved.

Second, “protect more green spaces” plus higher density in towns can reduce pressure on greenfield release. Our package said something different on method: treat Green Belt as a tool, with evidence-based release of low-quality, well-connected land. Town densification is necessary. It is not sufficient for Standard Method numbers in constrained southern and midland markets.

Third, call-in does not fix plan-making failures. The Goldilocks problem — sites scaled just large enough to need expensive fixed infrastructure, too small to pay for it — is a local-plan and viability failure. Moving the decision up a tier does not automatically correct under-scaled allocations.

Fourth, there is still no clear public commitment to realistic, sticky affordable-housing rates by value zone, transparent land-value capture instead of endless Section 106 negotiation, or a serious cull of cumulative regulatory load so SME builders can compete. Council housing can bypass some of that for public schemes. Private delivery of market and mixed tenure still hits the same wall.

Fifth, build-out incentives are largely unaddressed. More green lights do not guarantee faster completions if land-market incentives favour drip-feeding supply.

Sixth, institutional power for mayors is not a substitute for grassroots pro-housing representations. The democratic gap on the portals remains.

How it maps to our package

Fiscal stake for local government: weak or indirect. Rules-based planning in growth areas: partial, via mayoral call-in for large schemes. Viable, transparent infrastructure and affordable-housing obligations: partial, if the levy is well designed; detail missing. Green Belt as tool rather than totem: poor match — more protection language, densification-first. Cutting cumulative regulatory burden: not yet visible. Mixed public and private delivery: strong on the public side. Avoiding under-scaled strategic sites: not addressed. Mobilising supportive comments: not addressed.

Bottom line

Burnham’s package is serious about social housing and about overriding blockage of large applications. Those are real pieces of the UK housing problem. It will not, on current evidence, solve the problems we have identified. The binding constraints in many places remain local fiscal incentives that punish growth, plan allocations that sit in the viability trap, Green Belt and discretionary plan-making that keep land scarce, and a private development system still laden with front-loaded, negotiable costs.

Council houses on public land can add a meaningful stream of homes and ease waiting lists. They will not, by themselves, restore affordability for buyers and private renters if overall supply stays sticky. Mayoral intervention helps where a council is the bottleneck. It does less where the local plan itself under-scales sites or where infrastructure funding is the real stopper.

Closest to Build On: mixed delivery and a mechanism to override pure local veto on big schemes. Furthest from Build On: fiscal redesign for councils, rules-based land release, and treating Green Belt as a calibrated tool rather than a political sacred cow.

If the forthcoming consultation hardens infrastructure levies, ties Homes England money to delivery, and is paired with proper local fiscal reform and realistic strategic site sizing, the gap narrows. As currently reported, this is a partial institutional fix — not the full incentive-and-rules package the shortage requires. Targets and call-in powers without those foundations tend to produce temporary noise. Delivery needs the arithmetic and the politics to point the same way.