Can Michael Gove fix Britain’s housing problem?

When Michael Gove was switched in the ministerial reshuffle from the Cabinet Office, where he’d done much of the heavy lifting on Brexit and Covid, and to the housing department, there was much positive spin about how he’d be doing the heavy lifting there as well. This accomplished administrator, it was rumoured, was going to “deliver” on housing, a key part of the “levelling-up” agenda (that slogan also forming a key part of Mr Gove’s portfolio).

Now, though, it seems that maybe the new secretary of state for housing, communities and local government will be giving more weight to communities and local authorities than he will to the property developers to get on with solving Britain’s housing crisis. Mr Gove has let it be known he is minded to pause the scheduled radical changes in the planning rules, the better to understand the scale of the problem and alternative solutions.

This is the delayed impact of the loss of the Chesham and Amersham by-election to the Liberal Democrats in May. The surprise loss of a safe seat highlighted nimbyistic fears among Tory voters about new housing estates, some complete with (dread word) “social” housing and, very possibly, an increasing in supply that would hurt the value of their desirable residence(s).

These concerns were fully reflected by their MPs, who also feared that their political careers were also about to be concreted over in the rush to build. Mr Gove, who represents a Surrey constituency, is well aware of such concerns, as is the prime minister. Hence the change of personnel at the Department for Communities and Local Government, and hence the change, euphemistically termed a pause, in policy.

The housing dilemma, though, will remain no matter how long a pause Mr Gove imposes. It is a prime exemplar of the cakeism that infects so much of the prime minister’s doings. The government wishes, no doubt sincerely, to promote a property-owning democracy, understands that the best way to do it is to massively increase the supply of homes where people want them (and that is not usually “brownfield” sites), and would like the houses and flats to be built. On the other hand, they do not wish to alienate their supporters by building those very houses and flats where Liberal Democrats can shamelessly exploit local grievances. The prime minister wills the ends (more homes) but baulks at the means (building them). He has, in effect, told Mr Gove to find a way in which the government can have its cake and eat it on housing.

Mr Gove, in his time trying to make sense of Brexit and bringing order to the Covid response, is used to such impossible demands. No doubt he will strain every sinew to supply and preserve the cake and allow it to be simultaneously consumed. But, as with Brexit and Covid, the chances are that the result will be mess and confusion, as well as broken promises. The 2019 manifesto commitments were to “support the delivery of hundreds of thousands of affordable new homes” and “progress towards our target of 300,000 homes a year”. Mr Gove will have to ensure that “at least a million more homes” will be built by the next election. The foundations are not yet secure, it must be said. A shortage of building materials, drivers, skilled tradespeople and labourers makes a tough job even harder.

As a footnote, and with some irony, the planning pause represents the end of another of Dominic Cummings’s big ideas – an iconoclastic, impatient, indeed impetuous urge to sweep away with needless bureaucratic impediments to a bold housebuilding programme. Under the old plans, the brainchild of the man that Mr Gove nurtured and Mr Johnson adopted as a sort of intellectual auxiliary generator, planning approval would be granted automatically in huge swathes of designated greenfield development zones. There was to be a general presumption in favour of construction: a war on the nimbies. What “the neighbours” and their local councillors thought was to become irrelevant.

As a reforming minister, with Mr Cummmings at his side, this was exactly the sort of approach Mr Gove favoured when he battled the education “blob” and set up the free schools a decade ago. Some might have hoped for an encore with housing. Now, though, political realities are different, and so is the incumbent in No 10, who puts electability before any manifesto commitment (as we see with the social care tax). Mr Gove has more chance of “getting housing done” than his compromised predecessor, Robert Jenrick, but it’s likely he’ll be constructing more excuses than homes as the “pause” drags on.