At this month’s Gloucester Property Forum, our Director of JBP Local, Mark Hawthorne, was on hand to hear from Gloucester MP Alex McIntyre as he talked housing, devolution and what to expect from Andy Burnham’s first budget. Here are his key takeaways:
It wasn’t surprising for a property forum event that the main line of questioning was on housing and planning.
Many in the audience would have shared Alex’s conclusion that the current system is broken and even he had to admit the likelihood of delivering 1.5 million new homes by the next election is increasingly looking bleak.
For Alex though the underlining issue was the 5,000 on the council house waiting list in Gloucester, the growing homelessness issue in the city and the need for a huge expansion in council house building over the next 10 years – a clear aspiration shared with the new Prime Minister.
He sighted the recent decision to turn down the Podsmead regeneration scheme by city councillors (with the apparent loss of £40m investment) as a classic example of where decisions need to be taken away from politicians who are too susceptible to the whims of Nimbyism.
It might sound strange for a politician to advocate for decisions to be taken away from elected representatives, however again it’s not a million miles away from the new PM’s rewiring government agenda. Indeed, the new Mayoral power to “call in” rogue planning decisions taken by local councils alongside the NPPF’s more presumptive nature is a clear indication that N0.10 are looking for ways to overcome what they see as increasingly Nimby councils.
However, having said that, Alex McIntyre was still anti any development at Whadden. A site on the outskirts of Gloucester which has reached totemic status in Gloucester politics over the past 30 years – just going to show that Nimbyism is very much about from which viewpoint you happening to be standing on.
Turning to other national issues, Alex admitted he was as surprised as everyone else about the pause in the Local Government Reorganisation agenda. Alex had campaigned for the “One city” proposal advocated by the city council mainly on the believe that Gloucester was (and is) at risk of missing out on extra funding as part of the fairer funding review.
His personal belief was that the review would be over by Christmas, and that the proposals were unlikely to change for Gloucestershire – with shadow election taking place in 2028. The problem of course is that this is getting closer to a general election date – and you do have to wonder how much energy the new PM want to devote to a programme that isn’t exactly top of his agenda – time will tell!
As for the budget, Alex’s view was that Andy Burnham would aim for a “reassuring” budget. Alex outlined that everyone wanted tax cuts, but no one wanted to name the spending cuts they were willing to support. He also argued that while the welfare bill needed to come down, that cutting welfare in his view would simply put pressure on the public sector elsewhere.
That would certainly fit with the approach that Andy Burnham has taken since becoming PM. A desire to calm the political temperature down, not to rock the boat and try to take everyone along with him.
Easier said than done! I suspect Starmer and Reeves had little idea how much their proposed welfare cuts would blow up within their party or indeed how much the farmers’ inheritance tax issues would ignite political outrage beyond what they clearly thoughts was a very small cohort.
Listening to Alex at this event you could hear the internal conflicts that are raging within the Labour government. That desire to talk the social issues that he and many of his colleagues clearly feel passionate about, against the headwinds of insipid growth, mounting debt and a seemingly inability to tackle some of the fundamental problems that have gone unresolved for over 20 years.
A great morning and certainly an inciteful interview that lifted the lid on the challenges that Labour face over the coming months.