Labour vs the NIMBYs, plus are sandwiches ‘for wimps’?

Coffee House Shots

The Spectator

News, Politics, Government, Daily News

4.4 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2024

⏱️ 16 minutes

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Summary

Today Downing Street has continued its reset – that is definitely not a reset – by providing more details on Labour’s plan to cut the planning red tape and deliver a housing revolution. Their target is to build one and a half million new homes over the next five years by building on green belt land and giving councils mandatory targets. This has predictably been met with robust opposition from several groups who are concerned about the plan, which involves building on a green belt area the size of Surrey. Can Labour win its battle against the so-called NIMBYs (not in my backyard)?

In other news, it is publication day here at The Spectator! Our special Christmas triple issue is now available online and on newsstands. It includes interviews with Argentinian President Javier Milei and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch. Westminster is abuzz with the news that Badenoch is not a sandwich person – a revelation so significant that it has prompted a response from the Prime Minister. Are sandwiches ‘for wimps’?

Oscar Edmondson speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

Produced by Oscar Edmondson.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You can get three months of The Spectator for just £15, plus a free bottle of Paul Rouget-Champain if you go to spectator.com.
0:07.1	UK-Four slash FIS24.
0:10.2	This offer is UK-only and subject to availability.
0:17.5	Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, The Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.
0:21.6	I'm Oscar Edmondson and I'm joined by Katie Balls and Kate Andrews.
0:25.0	And today we've got some more details on Labor's Plan to overhaul the planning system and deliver a housing revolution.
0:31.9	Katie, can you take us through it?
0:33.4	Yes, so this is Downing Street continuing to, I suppose, continue if it's reset, but also just the sense of trying to talk about things that they actually want to do and their priorities, their milestones slash missions.
0:45.1	One of the things Kostama said in his speech last week was this target that had already been mentioned of building 1.5 million homes over the next five years.
0:53.5	Today, we have had more details on how they
0:56.2	plan to do that. So this is about the new version of the National Planning Policy Framework,
1:03.1	which has various measures. And the idea is to just make it so more land is used for house building.
1:09.1	Councils are being given mandatory targets to deliver up to 370,000 homes a year,
1:14.7	being told to identify lower quality greenbelt land that can be built on.
1:19.0	And as you can probably expect, there was already criticism that this goes too far.
1:24.3	You have various conservation groups suggesting that it goes beyond what labour initially
1:30.4	talked about, which was almost tackling the ugly parts of the Greenbelt. And when you're talking
1:34.8	about prioritising the area bigger than Surrey in terms of the Greenbelt, is this too extreme?
1:41.5	Will it come back to, you know, lead to backlash and so forth. But of course,
1:45.9	Labour are really trying to press the gears to make this happen quite quickly. And I think for now,
1:50.1	just in terms of the parliamentary Labour Party, there's quite a big YIMBY segment. So yes,
1:56.3	in my backyard. And you have, you know, the pro-growth group, they tend to be very pro-planning regulation.
	...

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