“We all want efficient, cost-effective and properly democratic local government. But the truth is size really does matter, and moving key decisions away from smaller District Councils and the communities they serve, to a huge, distant unitary authority, may not deliver the change we need.

“I understand why the Labour government is looking for quick fixes – sadly a decade of Conservative-government cuts has created a legacy of broken services, and local authorities on the edge of bankruptcy.

“But, it’s not clear that the proposed changes will save us any money – in fact there’s evidence that larger councils are not always more efficient.

“Moving services like planning to a unitary for example, takes them even further from where the impact is felt, and could end up being more expensive. Ensuring better shared services between districts would be a far more effective way to reduce costs.

“Just as importantly, how can moving decision-making away from towns, parishes and districts (which already work directly with communities) and passing it to a unitary authority be more democratic? Surely residents should be able to create and shape the places where they live? Local decision-making is the most effective way to do that and to keep residents engaged in the democratic process.

“If these plans do go ahead, Greens want to see:

• Increased power devolved to East Hertfordshire’s town and parish councils, alongside more resources, to ensure that residents can actively, directly impact decisions that affect them
• Solutions to address the health and social care crisis in Hertfordshire: genuinely new local health and social care partnerships that pool resources and include the power to bring private services back into the public sector
• Investment in integrated public transport and active travel across our county, especially in our areas which are currently under-served yet where people regularly travel
• Accelerated biodiversity and green spaces protection, ensuring that less power is in the hands of developers who have little interest in striking the right balance between building homes and protecting the environment

“Whatever the outcome of the devolution process, as Greens we expect to gain multiple seats in the County Council elections in May 2025 because we know from talking to residents that they’ve had enough of the chaos the Conservatives have caused.

“The Greens are the strongest opposition party in East Herts and have proved we can hold the Conservatives to account and fight for better. Like many residents, we want reduced problems with flooding, fewer potholes, better bus services, better access to SEN services and safer, cleaner streets.”

The post A Huge, Distant Herts Unitary Authority May Not Deliver Change Says Green Party Council Leader appeared first on East Herts Green Party.

The Development Management Committee is a cross-party group of councillors, who are tasked with reviewing all large-scale planning applications.  The committee is apolitical, and members are not whipped on how to vote.  Fundamentally, the Development Management Committee is not there to assess “is this a good application?” but rather “are there any reasons in planning law to refuse this application, and will these stand at appeal?”.

At the Development Management Committee, all three district councillors expressed their concerns, including the unsuitable location for the medical centre the lack of transport connections, sustainability, loss of agricultural land and drainage issues.

The application, for a residential development on an unsuitable edge-of-town site in Buntingford, was refused planning permission.

Cllr Vicky Burt (Buntingford): “As a Buntingford resident and councillor, I have always thought the development was unsuitable as it is unsustainable and inaccessible.

“The site is on the edge of town, located on a busy road, up a steep hill, with poor transport links.

“There has been a substantial amount of house building in Buntingford in recent years with few associated employment opportunities, thus forcing more people into their cars even more. The development goes against highways targets of half of journeys within a town being made on foot or by bicycle.

“In addition, both Edwinstree Middle School and Freman College, the town’s secondary school, are both oversubscribed in all year groups.

“I was also concerned about the foul water drainage system on the site, which depends on gravity for the western section and a pumping station for the eastern section. These ultimately feed into the foul water network on the adjacent site to the west. This site relies on a pumping station that pumps foul water into a manhole on Hare Street Road which feeds into the already stressed network feeding the Thames Water Sewage Treatment Works that does not have sufficient capacity.”

Cllr Sue Nicholls (Buntingford), said: “The major concern was not just the proposal to move our only primary care provision in Buntingford from the current site on an accessible, flat location in the centre of town, that is in easy reach on foot by a large proportion of local residents (even many less able residents) to a site at the top of a steep hill on the edge of town.

“It was also the fact that the application came with a proposal for around 200 houses attached to it. There are currently no strategic development sites in Buntingford as part of the District or local Neighbourhood Plans to reflect the detrimental impact of the scale of development that has already taken place in Buntingford – over 1000 since 2018.

“This, combined with the strain on drainage infrastructure and the sewage treatment works which, despite a £21M upgrade, does not have capacity to even meet the needs of the current population, loss of other facilities such as the swimming pool, adult day centre, youth club, banks, recycling centre and the strain put on other services including local dentists and oversubscribed middle and senior school meant that this application was unsustainable and would have caused significant harm to the community.”

East Herts District Council was keen for residents to ensure their concerns could be addressed and therefore held a Development Management Forum in July. The Forum enabled petitioners to present their views to councillors, planning officers and the applicant, prior to the planning application being determined. The forum provided early discussion of the planning issues raised by petitioners and explored the scope for building consensus and resolving concerns.

Cllr Sue Nicholls (Buntingford), added: “The Development Management Forum was the important first step in the process of engaging the Buntingford community in preparation for the planning application being considered by the Development Management Committee. It also played a really key role in bringing members of the community together and more importantly getting the rather reluctant town council on board to fight this application. All of this work has meant months of hard work and preparation but it was a crucial step to ensure local people have had opportunities to have their say.”

The post Buntingford’s Green Party Councillors Speak Up For residents as Unpopular Planning Application is Refused appeared first on East Herts Green Party.

Two narratives dominate discussions about the housing market:

1. That house prices have risen due to high immigration, arguing that the influx of people has generated so much competition for properties that they’re now unaffordable. 
2. That rising house prices are caused by a lack of supply – we’re simply not building enough new houses. 

Both are underpinned by a common rationale; house prices are rising because supply cannot keep up with demand. 

If this is true then the Labour government’s new build programme should eliminate house price inflation, and if over supply is sufficient, house prices should fall. 

However, if supply and demand is not the driver, we could be sacrificing our green belt and disfiguring our towns and villages needlessly.

Travelling around England, you don’t get the impression that building has stalled. On the contrary, towns appear to be being strangled by sprawling new housing estates. The numbers confirm this feeling – in 2001, there were 21.21 million houses in England and 49.45 million people, 2.33 people per household. In 2023, there were 25.4 million¹ houses and 57.7 million² people, 2.27 people per household.

More houses per person and lower occupancy should have resulted in cheaper housing in a supply and demand situation. The reality is very different – in 2001, the average house price in England was £84,377, in 2023, it was over £302,000.³ In just 22 years, the price of the average home in England has increased by more than three and a half times!

What is the real driver behind rising house prices?

M2 is a measure of the money supply that includes cash and deposits readily convertible to cash. The M2 money supply in the UK in January 2001 was £835 billion, rising to £3.1 trillion⁴ in January 2023. This 371% increase is remarkably close to the 358% increase in the house price index, suggesting that the house price index is tracking money supply not housing demand. Relative to the money supply, houses cost about the same as they did 22 years ago.

In Jan 2001, average weekly earnings in the UK were £321, in Jan 2023 this had risen to £637⁵ – an increase of 198%. Measured as a percentage of the money supply, we are paid less than we were 22 years ago, salary increases have not tracked money supply increases, whilst house prices are closely aligned to it. In real terms, house prices have not risen, salaries have fallen, causing the housing affordability crisis.

We accepted this cut in our salaries because it didn’t happen transparently. It’s not clear how much a salary needs to rise each year to maintain its real value. Most people expect their salary to follow the Retail Price Index (RPI), but this tracks the cost of consumer items. Neither the money supply nor house prices are included in the RPI.

The situation was made worse by Quantitative Easing – between March 2009 and November 2020 the Bank of England bought government and corporate bonds⁶ – but they didn’t use existing money to pay for them, they created “new” money, increasing the money supply. Mechanisms such as ‘Help to Buy’ (HTB) and ‘Stamp Duty Land Tax’ (SDLT) relief provided additional stimuli to the housing market.

Since 1931, our currency has been ‘fiat money’, not convertible to gold or any other asset and the words on bank notes, “I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of…” have been a lie. Fiat money holds its value simply because people have faith that other parties will accept it, based on trust in the government and its ability to levy and collect taxes⁷. Harold Wilson famously said that devaluation “does not mean, of course, that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse, or in your bank, has been devalued”⁸. Wilson lied, breaking the trust with the people whose trust underpins the value of our money, and the lies continue.

Even if we could abolish immigration and build 300,000 new houses a year, house prices wouldn’t fall. They might rise less quickly, but probably still faster than wages. The crisis isn’t caused by a lack of housing or house building, it’s caused by investors treating housing as an investable commodity. The driver for the increase in house prices has been the increase in the money supply and inflated house prices have turned us into indebted wage slaves.

We can use taxation and legislation to make housing unattractive to investors but squeezing them out gradually without crashing the market will be difficult. It might be easier to squeeze the money supply to stabilise the housing market, but this risks recession, job losses and, paradoxically, falling wages.

We need to be honest, admit that the private sector can’t provide for those that have been left behind, and embark on an urgent programme of publicly-owned social house building. Atlee’s government built over 800,000 new council houses⁹, whilst simultaneously establishing Green Belts to protect our countryside¹⁰. We can do it again!

More about Councillor Nick Cox:

Nick Cox is East Herts District Councillor for Ware Trinity and Parish Councillor for Stanstead St Margarets. He has lived in East Herts for 37 years, is a self-employed building services design and project manager and a leading authority on sustainable refrigeration and air conditioning. Nick was involved in the successful Hoddesdon incinerator campaign, is a long-standing member of Greenpeace, a life member of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and is XR East Herts Political Liaison Officer. He lives with Alison, his wife of 38 years, and their 7-year-old blue roan cocker spaniel, Alfie.

Sources:

1. Statista: Total housing stock in England 2001-2023

2. Statista: Population of England from 1971 to 2023

3.  Land Registry: House Price Statistics

4. Trading Economics: UK Money Supply   

5. Trading Economics: UK Wages

6. Bank of England: Quantitative Easing 

7. Investopedia: How Currency Works

8. Money Week: Harold Wilson’s ‘pound in your pocket’ little white lie

9. Property Wire: Labour vows for Clement Attlee-style ‘new towns’10. Wikipedia: Town and Country Planning Act 1947

The post Buy to Live or Buy to Invest: Why we need a new approach to solve the housing crisis. An opinion piece by District Councillor Nick Cox. appeared first on East Herts Green Party.

Bengeo field is a much-loved area of land, on which a planning application for 118 dwellings was approved on Wednesday 18th September, taking approximately 10% of the current land. Many have campaigned against this proposal, including the three Green Bengeo Ward Councillors, Cllrs Alex Daar, Ben Crystall, and Vicky Smith, all of whom attended the Development Management Committee meeting (where planning applications are discussed) as ward councillors to speak against the proposal. [Link to meeting speakers against the application].

While many people feel deeply upset, disappointed, and angered about the decision to approve the application, I wanted to take a bit of time to explain more broadly the planning process – all information I have only learnt myself since getting involved in the council!

Housing targets for the UK are set by the government, and despite there being a million empty homes (according to census data in 2021) and a million homes that planners have allowed but developers haven’t built (according to Planning Portal data in July 2024), the new Labour government announced in July that all councils in England are to be given new, mandatory housing targets to pave the way to deliver 1.5 million more homes. In Hertford, one example of a site that has already received planning permission for more than 300 homes but that developers appear to have abandoned is the Gas Works in Marsh Lane.

Once these national targets are set, all local authorities are legally required to follow national planning policy, which is skewed heavily in favour of developers. The government requires councils to provide a minimum number of new homes based on a housing-need calculation and are required to demonstrate an adequate supply of land (5-year land supply). More info from the government on 5-year housing land supply. If a council can’t demonstrate this adequate supply of land for housing development, the government’s rules are clear –  planning applications are decided based on a “tilted balance”, which is slanted even more favourably towards developers. The main tool at a council’s disposal is a district plan, and, for individual wards, to have local neighbourhood plans. The district plan will include a series of strategic development sites, along with areas for biodiversity, infrastructure plans, climate mitigation and any other wider objectives for the area. Refreshing a district plan is a huge process and typically takes seven years to complete. 

In East Herts, the current district plan was created and approved by the then Conservative-led District Council in 2018. It included part of Bengeo field (Hert4) as a strategic development site, along with various others across the district. [Link to East Herts District Plan] As such, you could argue that its fate was already sealed, in that some form of development would happen there sooner or later, and it was just a matter of which one and when. 

All developments and larger scale planning applications are brought forward to the Development Management Committee, a cross-party group of councillors, who are required to be apolitical and as objective as possible when making decisions on applications. Decisions are to be based strictly on planning rules and material considerations. Essentially, the committee is not there to answer the question “is this a good plan?”, but rather “are there sufficient planning reasons to refuse this planning application, and would these reasons be upheld at appeal?”  Politics and personal feelings are to be left at the door.

I remember hearing this before being elected, and thinking “what’s the point in that then? Surely people are elected to be political?!” I still partially think this, but at the same time can appreciate that the alternative is councillors likely to pretty much not approve anything, which arguably creates wider housing issues. The reality, however, is simply that developers would appeal and win, and if there are too many appeals, councils will just lose any say at all. 

The Bengeo Field planning application was discussed at length over three hours at the Development Management Committee meeting on the 18th September and there were points raised about transport, infrastructure, water, and affordable housing. Not being on the committee myself, it really isn’t my place to comment on the particulars of how people voted. However, I do know that these decisions are never easy, are heavily constrained, and are rarely taken lightly. It is easy to blame the planners, or blame the councillors (or more generally “the council”), but the wider system is weighted heavily against local councils – an example being Vistry’s recent successful appeal after the council refused permission to build 350 homes near Buntingford. In this case, despite loss of agricultural land, loss of countryside, and poor accessibility of services, the Planning Inspectorate found these insufficient reasons to refuse the application, and overruled the council’s decision. 

For Bengeo field, those who have campaigned so passionately are now looking at potential next steps, and you can follow their story on the Love Bengeo Field Facebook Page. More broadly, the new Labour government is currently looking at national planning policy and there is a public consultation on their proposed approach, open until Tuesday 24th Sept. While the national policy is still in discussion, now is also an excellent time to contact your MP, share your concerns and views on how to improve planning policy and make any suggestions for what you’d like the future of national planning policy to look like.For more on the Green Party’s manifesto on providing fairer, greener homes for all, check out the Green Party Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter.

More about Councillor Sarah Hopewell:

Councillor Sarah Hopewell is Executive Member for Wellbeing at East Herts District Council. Sarah graduated from Bath University in 2005 and spent the first 9 years of her career in a variety of community support worker roles working in housing, mental health and drugs/alcohol. When working as a drug and alcohol support worker she studied for an MSc in Addiction Psychology and Counselling. Since then, she has spent five years working as a Research Assistant at the University of Cambridge and four years as a Research and Evaluation Officer in Public Health at Hertfordshire County Council. She now works at Campaign for Better Transport and is a Councillor for Castle Ward on Hertford Town Council.

The post Hertford Councillor Sarah Hopewell on the go-ahead given to build on the much-loved Bengeo Field appeared first on East Herts Green Party.