The Observer view on why Michael Gove’s housing plans do little to help build a better Britain | Observer editorial

It’s clear that housing will be a major issue at the next election, as it should be. Large sections of the population continue to be excluded from adequate and secure housing by the high costs of owning and renting. Rising interest rates are squeezing mortgage holders, especially those least able to pay the increased costs of borrowing. The rate of new housebuilding is falling.

Last week the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, announced “a long-term plan” to “build a better Britain”, one with “many more homes” and “in the right places”. Some of his ideas sound good, but on examination his proposals look less like a serious effort to address the huge and complex issues of housing and planning than an attempt to curry favour with voters worried about new development in their back yards.

He rightly argued that it’s better to build in existing cities and towns and on ex-industrial brownfield sites than on green fields and in green belts. He also pointed out that it’s good to do so at high densities, which use land sparingly and can produce “productive, creative and attractive” places to live, like Paris, Edinburgh, New York and Barcelona. English cities (as planning is a devolved matter, his remit is confined to England) tend to be more spread out. He identified London as a place with particular scope for increasing housing numbers.

Gove’s problem is that almost identical ideas were promoted by the architect Richard Rogers, as an adviser to Tony Blair’s government more than 20 years ago, and put into practice by the then deputy prime minister John Prescott and London mayor Ken Livingstone. The capital’s density dramatically increased as a result, which means that the most viable sites have already been redeveloped. The further increases in density proposed by Gove could only be achieved by demolishing and rebuilding swathes of central London, which is not a realistic or attractive option.

There is scope for development in ex-industrial cities in the Midlands and the north of England, but much of this would require demand for new homes that would only come with state-assisted boosts to regional economies. Densification is possible in outer London suburbs, but Gove – no doubt with an eye on the voters who kept Uxbridge and South Ruislip in Conservative hands – explicitly ruled this out.

Gove, in other words, offers little to show how he would go beyond such development as Blair and Prescott’s policies achieved in urban locations. While his announcement included proposals for locations including Cambridge, Leeds and Barrow – some sensible enough – they are piecemeal rather than comprehensive. Some of his notions are contradictory. His belief that development should require “full input” from local communities sits awkwardly with the fierce opposition that his plans for Cambridgeshire instantly provoked both from local councils and the local Tory MP Anthony Browne.

As desirable as it is to build in existing cities and towns, any sane plan for addressing housing need has to include development on a small proportion of green belt and other green land. This offers the chance to create homes where many families want to live, close to open space, in houses with gardens, with the amenities they need. It makes it possible for the government to capture some of the colossal increases in value that come when such land gains permission for housing, and spend it on public benefits.

Nor can need be met by urban development alone. Prescott set a target of building 60% of new homes on brownfield sites, which still left 40% to be achieved elsewhere. Gove, however, has made it clear that he opposes development of green belt land in almost any circumstances. The main purpose of his recent announcement seems to be to create the illusion that all new building can happen in places where rural and suburban voters don’t live, while also scoring other political points – to bash the London mayor Sadiq Khan for building too little, for example.

Labour, meanwhile, is proposing a string of development corporations, public-private organisations of a kind that achieved the building of Milton Keynes and the redevelopment of London’s Docklands, empowered to buy and improve land. These, in principle, could make those tricky brownfield sites work. The party has cautiously suggested building on green belt land, but only on “poor quality” sites where development won’t negatively affect the countryside.

Labour’s plans are still light on detail. They focus, as the Tories do, more on the numbers of homes built than on their affordability, which is the more pressing issue. They talk, also like the Tories, more about increasing rates of home ownership than about improving the opportunities for those many people who, out of choice or necessity, will continue to rent. But of the two, they are the most realistic and constructive about housing.

This is a fraught political issue, which is why successive governments have failed to address it. It is legitimate to want to protect countryside, and to defend your neighbourhood against what might be damaging development, but the aspirations of housing have-nots are more pressing. The cost of failing to address housing is to reduce the quality of life for millions, and to constrict the productivity of the country. The issue deserves better than electioneering games.