Levelling-up takes centre stage as election battle lines are drawn

#Week 20 saw the Innesco team venture to Leeds in Northern England for the second annual UK Real Estate and Infrastructure Investment Forum (UKREIIF). The event, which has quickly established itself as a ‘must-attend’ for UK real estate, offers significant opportunities to connect and share ideas among key investors, decision-makers and influencers from across the UK.

Local authorities were out in force, promoting schemes and seeking partners, while initiatives such as the #Western Gateway demonstrated positive collaboration between multiple local authorities and the private sector to drive change and deliver positive economic impacts.

One area of discussion was the frustration around relationships with Government, with Peabody Chair Lord Bob Kerslake urging it to re-set its relationship with the building industry: “To put it mildly, this has been a difficult time in that relationship, in the aftermath of Grenfell and the need to tackle the safety issue, and some very contested issues around planning and development…, I would say to the minister, rebuild that relationship – let’s get the country growing and building and developing again.” 

Another popular topic was the government’s levelling up agenda, with some constructive criticisms of their allocation of funding. Thought-provoking points came from Holly Lewis, co-founder of We Made That, an architectural practice bidding on levelling up projects. She called for investment not only in new buildings but in the services and amenity spaces that surround them for true community levelling-up. 

In a morning session hosted by politicians-turned-podcasters Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, a room full of property professionals almost unanimously predicted Labour’s Keir Starmer as the next prime minister. However, none could point to what a future Labour government’s economic policy might look like. 

In tandem this week, the issue of housing was catapulted to the top of the forthcoming election agenda. In an interview with #TheTimes, Kier Starmer pledged to ease the housing crisis by allowing more building on the green belt and by revisiting the mandatory housebuilding targets recently abandoned by the Sunak government. He vowed to "back the builders not blockers”, but made it clear that a wider scale relaxation of planning restrictions was essential to address the UK housing crisis. 

He stressed the need for house building at pace, putting local areas in charge by changing planning rules and having development corporations as vehicles to drive building. He added that although he “of course” wanted to protect the countryside, his party was prepared to make tough choices. 

The Chairman of the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) has also called for reforms to strengthen their plan-led system, sharing concerns that current plans risk paying lip service to community needs, whilst giving councils fewer policy tools to actually deliver them. 

Meanwhile, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove, took aim at local authorities perceived to be falling short on delivering their housing obligations. In an open letter to ten local authorities earlier this week, Gove threated to withdraw their planning powers if they fail to raise the threshold of approved applications by June 2023.

Critics have argued that a lack of resource, rather than a lack of will, has contributed to any slowdown in housing delivery. A decade of underfunding of planning departments, followed by a tumultuous 12 months in politics (not to mention, seven different housing ministers within the past 18 months) are surely contributory key factors in current housing policy failings.

While the posturing between both opposing mainstream parties is likely to continue for another year or so at least, it is encouraging to see events like UKREEiF unlock potential despite the prevailing political backdrop. New sources such as the Levelling Up Fund, the English Cities Fund the Future High Streets Fund are a real catalyst for the urban regeneration agenda and are already well on course to delivering the new homes, infrastructure and investment that is so badly needed throughout the UK.