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FROM THE EDITOR


Government's forthcoming, and highly controversial, planning Bill. Among other things, it introduces new ‘growth’ zones across the UK, freeing up development in often NIMBY-filled, traditionally Tory areas.


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Showing the strength of feeling, Chesham and Amersham in leafy Buckinghamshire saw a shock defeat for the Conservatives by the Lib Dems. This turned a blue majority of 16,000-plus in the last Election into an 8,000 majority for Ed Davey’s candidate, the party-defying HS2 opponent Sarah Green, who partly benefitted from a protest vote against the transport project. However, also keenly in the voters’ sights were the Government’s planning reforms, hoped to unlock the 300,000 homes target, but in the process causing a furore by potentially taking power to build away from planners, and communities.


There’s little that those communities care about more than their ‘back yard’ suddenly changing shape, and a wide range of residents, not only in the ‘Shires,’ but across the UK, are up in arms. You wonder how many more constituencies will be ready to turn their backs on the MP they only recently supported, once the effects of a more open system start to bite?


Some believe that there is a wider factor, that the Tories’ focus on preventing the previously red northern ‘wall’ of voters from being knocked down – manifested in the ‘levelling up agenda’ – means their voters in southern constituencies are feeling unloved. Those areas certainly won’t be getting the investment others will, but they will be getting the homes, because it’s where developers can sell.


Another objection of mutinous ex-Tory voters in Chesham and Amersham was that developers will prioritise higher-yield homes, not ones that first-time buyers can afford. But if the economic post-Covid factors take a downhill course and the four-bedroom homes don’t sell, the result could be empty, well- appointed ghost towns on what were green fields.


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Has the Government handed planning policy over to developers? Or will it have the courage to bring in a more robust approach to getting developers to build the right homes in the right areas, as it has on forcing them to begin development within 18 months of getting planning approved? The housebuilding sector, unsurprisingly, doesn’t like the idea of allowing residents to have the final say one bit, and rolling back on the promises it has made will cause a major dust-up for the Government.


It’s hammered by voters for loosening up planning, but when it tries to make builders build, it gets it in the neck from the industry. The bottom line is that nearly a million plots are sitting with planning but without a house on them. We were 74,000 behind the 300,000 homes a year target in 2020, but builders won’t deliver if the conditions aren’t right. The question is, how many voters can the Government afford to lose?


07.21


James Parker Editor


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THE RICHARD ROGERS DRAWING GALLERY, PROVENCE Rogers’ final project is a cantilevered box within an orange steel cage, soaring over woodland in the grounds of a French Château


MILL HILL HOUSE, LONDON RISE Design Studio’s debut new build combines Georgian with modern


ON THE COVER... A gravity-defying cantilevered form soaring over Provence woodland, the Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery is the renowned architect’s final project before his retirement Cover image © James Reeve For the full report on this project, go to page 42


ne of the few issues that can unite the left and the right arms of the political spectrum, for different reasons, is the vexed question of where new houses should be built. A cohort of Labour MPs recently joined forces with some of their opposing counterparts to try and water down the


ADF JULY 2021


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