Planning, Markets and Rural Housing

Nick Gallent

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317995425
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

This book analyses the key forces affecting the affordability of rural homes in Britain and the changing shape of housing markets. It takes as its starting point, demographic trends impacting upon rural communities and upon market dynamics. From this point, it explores consequent patterns of housing affordability, examining changing opportunities in the rental and sale markets, at different spatial scales. The book also focuses on how markets are analysed, and how data are selectively used to demonstrate low levels of affordability, or a lack of need for additional housing in small village locations.

Building on the demographic theme, the book considers the housing implications of an aging population, before the focus finally shifts to community initiative in the face of housing undersupply and planning's future role in delivering and procuring a more constant and predictable supply of affordable homes. In a speculative conclusion, the book ends by examining the current political trajectory in England, and the prospects for housing in the countryside in the context of localism and neighbourhood planning at a village level.

This book was published as a special issue of Planning Practice and Research.

New Agendas in Planning and Rural Housing

NICK GALLENT

The papers presented in this special edition were all prepared, in an earlier form, for a session at the 2007 Royal Geographical Society (RGS) Conference in London supported by the Rural Geography and the Planning and Environment Research Groups. The aim of that session was to explore the changing context in which local actors in rural England (and elsewhere in the UK)—planning authorities, housing associations, and community groups, including those forming land trusts—are trying to supply additional housing in response to persistent need, or deal with continuing demand pressures. In particular, we were concerned with planning reform in England, post 2004, and the opportunities it might present to respond differently to housing challenges. The context is a familiar one: for many years, a variety of pressures on the rural housing stock—both demand pressures and the pressure generated by the unwillingness of successive governments to take seriously the issue of housing undersupply or ease the planning system’s presumption against most development in rural areas—have gone unchecked. Hoggart and Henderson (2005) have claimed that the defining characteristic of UK rural policy in recent times has been a ‘lack of conviction’ in responding to the changing ‘social composition of the countryside’, evidenced in declining housing affordability—for the worst-off sections of rural society—and increasing gentrification, at least since the 1970s.

At the RGS, the English situation was held up as an example of the failure of central government(s) to ease the pressures on poorer sections of rural society where the demand for property outstrips supply and where stricter planning regulations (and the enforcement of those regulations) provide few opportunities to increase housing availability or access. Rural England today continues to experience many of the pressures that exist elsewhere in the developed world: strong counter-urbanization, especially in urban hinterlands; demographic ageing, accelerated by retirement migration; recreational consumption, including second-home buying and holiday-home investment; and a desire to preserve rural character and reduce the urbanizing effect of development. England’s experience differs from that of other countries owing to the strength of national feeling in favour of protecting the ‘rural resource’ and preserving rural character. Elsewhere, this same resource is more readily exploited for the sake of what is viewed as progressive rural development. Hence England (and the UK more generally) stands out from its immediate neighbour (the Republic of Ireland) and from southern Europe (especially Italy and Greece) where the pace of land-use change is seen as a bigger challenge than development constraint or the spiralling cost of property. However, striking the right balance between ‘development and environment’ is a common theme in the study of rural housing, and one that is explored in this special edition.

The spur to organize a session of papers on this topic came from the expectation that planning in England can, and will in the future, do more to address this issue: in other words, that central intervention will begin to function as it should. In the past 5 years, the Barker Review of Housing Supply (HM Treasury, 2004) together with the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act (HM Government, 2004), have signalled a new emphasis on strategic responses to local problems as well as greater emphasis on market responsiveness: easing planning restriction to ‘unlock the blockages’ in local housing supply and therefore address price distortions. Since these developments, the onset of a global ‘credit crunch’ has led to a questioning of planning’s key and fundamental role in restricting housing supply and contributing to worsening affordability ratios. The Royal Town Planning Institute, representing the planning community, has long insisted that it is the availability of loan finance and not land supply (which, it adds, has been in a steady state and not overly constrained by the actions of local planning) that is the key determinant of housing access and availability at a reasonable cost. However, basic economics play a crucial role in rural housing markets, whether affected by credit or land availability. The UK government’s most recent planning policy on housing in England (‘PPS3’; Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006) signalled an intention to take the economic dimension a lot more seriously, and articulated a view that housing should be planned at a sub-regional level, with land release (governed by development planning at the local level) responding to ‘price signals’. Crudely, high prices should be viewed as evidence of ‘market disequilibrium’ with supply lagging too far behind demand, and correction being required. This would be achieved by bringing more land onto the market for development.

This basic assertion within revised planning policy sent alarm bells ringing across the country, and they rang loudest in rural areas. The policy approach, and Barker’s underlying analysis, was derided as being grounded in fundamentally flawed and simplistic ‘O-level economics’. In their response to the Barker Review, the Campaign to Protect Rural England challenged the basic assertion that there has been a ‘long term undersupply of market homes’ (2005, p. 4) and registered its fundamental disagreement with the view that ‘[…] house prices should play a leading role in the planning of new homes, with more land being released when prices are high’ (2005, p. 6). Despite a range of counter-arguments—articulated in the Campaign to Protect Rural England’s detailed response to the Barker Review in 2005—government’s revision of its planning policy for housing was very much a ‘child of Barker’, setting out the requirement that local planning authorities should monitor a range of evidence and determine whether land release for housing was sufficient to ward off the dreaded ‘market disequilibrium’. A much bigger role in this process was handed to regional planning bodies, and local authorities were called upon to identify ‘locations for future growth’ (a euphemism for the additional allocation of housing land ‘buffers’) within their local development frameworks, which could be opened to development if evidence of declining affordability emerged.

It was in this context that a special session on ‘new agendas in planning and rural housing’ was conceived (back in 2006, just following the publication of PPS3). The basic questions then seemed to be how will this system work and what effect will it have on housing supply, on affordability and on the pursuit of sustainable (and acceptable) development in rural areas? Since 2006, two different answers have emerged. Firstly, the fears expressed by the Campaign to Protect Rural England—that injection of market principles would bring the fabled ‘concreting over the countryside—have proven unfounded. There has been no green light to housing development across rural England: those villages that were exclusive and expensive in 2006 remained so in 2008. Conventional land allocations, and ‘locations for future growth’, remain concentrated in and around principal settlements (usually market towns) and this pattern of development looks unlikely to change. So it has been business as usual as far as ‘village England’ is concerned. Secondly, the planning framework—or at least the framework set nationally—has inched towards the further release of strategic sites, not just in market towns but also at other ‘growth points’ and short-listed ‘eco-towns’. This offers some proof of central government’s ambition to bring about a step-change in housing supply, although it looks now to be an ambition that will be thwarted as much by economic recession as the objections of rural England’s army of NIMBYs. Indeed, the end of easy credit for potential homebuyers looks likely to have a bigger effect on the proposed eco-town at Middle Quinton, in Stratford-upon-Avon District, than the recent intervention of the Hollywood actress Judy Dench who has been a prominent figure in local opposition to the proposal.

These two different answers add up to essentially the same outcome: namely that very little has changed in terms of the development response or in terms of the difficulties that some sections of rural society face in accessing housing at a reasonable cost. But reform of the planning system has not been the only answer to the rural housing question. Back in 2006, the Affordable Rural Housing Commission launched a report containing a raft of recommendations for government departments, regional assemblies, local authorities and communities. Whilst revision of planning policy was a key suggestion of the Commission—moving away from an approach based on ‘muddling through’ (a phrase used by Hoggart and Henderson [2005] to describe the reliance on ‘rural exceptions’ outside service centres) to a more ‘plan-led approach in partnership with communities’—the Affordable Rural Housing Commission came up with 55 recommendations in all. These ranged from broad policy ideas to reflections on local practice, and from definite plans to release more public and private land for housing to new ways to work with communities and build consensus around the need for extra homes. Progress made in implementing these ideas was reviewed by the Commission for Rural Communities in 2008. After 2 years, no definite action had been taken on 30 of the recommendations, 16 had been partly acted on, and 9 recommendations had been taken forward (Commission for Rural Communities, 2008). A failure to implement seems to hinge on two issues: a capacity to coordinate actions between different levels, and the old chestnut of building consensus around the need for development. The 2008 progress assessment argues that opportunities to take a more ‘plan-led’ approach to planning for village housing have not been picked up by local authorities, mainly because regional planning bodies continue to prioritize strategic allocations and place undue emphasis on the exceptions approach outside market towns. The ‘lack of conviction’ in dealing with issues of social composition, beyond the occasional hard-fought exceptions scheme, remains a feature of planning and housing policy in many areas, as does a failure to promote effective ways ‘in which rural communities support rather than oppose new housing development’ (Commission for Rural Communities, 2008, p. 2).

These are fundamental challenges, and the hope that a further inquiry into these issues—commissioned in 2007 by Gordon Brown and chaired by the MP for Truro, Matthew Taylor—might yield new answers seems somewhat forlorn given that the past four decades have been punctuated by so many bright ideas but so little tangible progress. It is in this broader context that we have now reviewed and updated the analyses of these issues presented in London more than a year ago. The six papers included in this special edition plot a course through some of the issues outlined above, dealing—in sequence—with the sustainability of rural housing development, observed patterns of affordability, the dynamics of rural housing markets and the implications for future planning, dealing with demographic aging in the countryside (as one aspect of the changing social composition), working with communities to find solutions through the land trust model, and, finally, systematizing planning’s approach to housing supply in ‘village England’.

Tony Champion brings under the spotlight the common assertion that rural areas, and settlements, are intrinsically less sustainable than their urban counterparts: hence the need to limit development in all its forms. His focus is on carbon emissions, and in particular those generated by commuting. His review of a plethora of previous commuting studies is followed by further analysis that aims to achieve greater precision in, and greater understanding of, commuting flow analysis. He makes some headway towards this precision, but concludes by flagging up unanswered questions. It is clear that an identified urban/rural differential in commuting distances—supporting an urban good/rural bad myth—is simplistic. But how do we move beyond this? We need a broader analysis of movement, beyond home-to-workplace and vice versa; we need to understand how rural in-migration affects commuting. Are rural areas attracting more of the types of household with a propensity to commute? Moreover, we need to face up to complexity: commuting is not only determined by geography, but also by socio-demographic characteristics; again by the changing social composition of the countryside highlighted by Hoggart and Henderson (2005). Ultimately, extension of the evidence base is essential. This will help put pay to conjecture and lead to a more nuanced understanding of the ‘pros and cons of (development) alternatives relating to the scale, type, and geographical patterning of settlement and economic activity’. We are currently rejecting development, and especially residential development, in rural areas on the basis of an incomplete evidence base.

Glen Bramley and David Watkins’ contribution unpacks the complexity of the affordability concept—and patterns of affordability—in England. Focusing on affordability ‘within areas’ (the percentage of households in a neighbourhood who can afford to enter the housing market in that neighbourhood), ‘outward affordability’ (the percentage of households in a neighbourhood who can afford to enter the housing market in the wider area), and ‘inward affordability’ (the percentage of households in the wider area who could afford to enter the housing market in this particular neighbourhood) at different spatial scales, eventually ‘drilling down’ to wards, their analysis reveals a complicated picture of housing affordability. They are able to show that although buying is often less affordable in rural areas, the private rental sector tends to be easier to access. Discounting aspiration, this means that rural areas are generally more affordable. But confirming Champion’s analysis, migration in these areas is frequently significant, making housing supply a key issue in the countryside: social housing output is certainly not commensurate with need. This broad and detailed analysis of affordability, of housing supply, of market trends, and of the current policy climate (encompassing issues of supply, sustainability and infrastructure) concludes that it seems unlikely there will be ‘incremental additions to large numbers of smaller village settlements’, although villages can make a case for a ‘fair share’ of investment in affordable housing given a continuing failure to address the needs of the ‘worst-off’ sections of some rural communities.

Mike Coombes’ paper examines the emergent focus on sub-regional ‘housing market areas’ as a basis for residential allocations in local plans. He argues that how these areas are drawn (e.g. truncating mainly rural from mainly urban areas, or lumping rural areas in with the nearest conurbation) will have a profound effect on the observed supply–demand balance and therefore on the planning response. Broadly, the decision has been made in England to develop a new regional focus in housing policy, with compliance cascading down through the sub-regions (delineated housing market areas) to the planning authorities. But it is the precise boundaries of the housing market areas that will ‘shape the results’ of the required post-Barker housing price analysis, sometimes leading to the calculation of meaningless averages. This is because ‘cities with excess supply are often near to rural areas where demand exceeds supply’. Put the two together and the outward result might be near-perfect market equilibrium. But greater concern for geographical sensitivity or some recognition of the contrasting circumstances of rural and urban areas—and therefore a redefinition of boundaries—would produce very different results. Coombes’ key message echoes that of Bramley and Watkins: scale matters. As one ‘drills down’, market patterns become more complex; it is far easier to generalize—and to interpret patterns for the purpose of policy development—when one takes the bigger picture. At the same time, the evidential complexity of identifying ‘sub-markets’ means that building agreement around the definition of housing market areas is invariably difficult, and often boils down to whether definition leads to discernable patterns that can be acted upon. The goal, after all, is to develop a framework for action. The concern, which emerges from this paper, is that rural areas may be particularly susceptible to ‘boundary error’, with plentiful housing supply in a service centre used to justify zero growth policies in outlying villages.

Socio-demographic change in the countryside is presenting a challenge for planning and housing policy that is only slowly being recognized. Mark Bevan’s contribution looks at the changing needs of an aging rural population, and how planning should respond in terms of policies for ‘mainstream housing’ and not just ‘specialized accommodation for older people’. Housing design, in particular, will play a key part in determining future quality of life experiences amongst the aging population. Bevan explores recent research in this field, ultimately arguing that planning has a role in responding to aspiration so as to avoid being a cause of forced movement, as badly designed homes become unsuited to an individual’s changing needs or contribute to ‘architectural disability’. A ‘whole systems approach’ is needed to the planning of public service components: health, housing and transport. Indeed, rural areas should be comprehensively planned to provide ‘lifetime neighbourhoods’, a message that has resonance not only in relation to the needs of older people but of all rural residents, irrespective of life-stage. However, because of the low rate of new-build and housing replacement in many villages, it is likely that many older people will find it increasingly difficult to remain in their homes. The capacity to respond to aging will be greater in those urban areas and market town locations where development—sometimes, but not always, to the Lifetime Homes standard—is currently being concentrated.

Building community support for new affordable housing projects is likely to be a key objective of government policy in the future. This objective will be more readily achievable when communities themselves are put in the driving seat. Madhu Satsangi argues that, in the context of ‘competing discourses of sustainability’, community land trusts ‘emerge as sustainable models for tackling the question of land availability’ for affordable local housing. Following a review of these competing discourses—centred on the environment, the needs of the rural economy and questions of what constitutes community—the paper settles into a discussion of past and existing power relations in rural areas, focusing on the Scottish situation. Land reform in Scotland has opened up new opportunities for community land ownership, and this provides the context for exploring how shifting power relations and land tenure can impact on the entrenched discourses of sustainability, which support competing rationales for the planning system, and which sometime defeat any attempt to provide community housing. Using the example of land tenure change on the Isle of Gigha, Satsangi examines the transition from feudal landholding to community buy-out, and the consequent perception of long-term shared benefits. His case study on one community land trust reveals how discourses of sustainability take on new meaning in a context of local landownership, ceasing to be barriers to change and instead becoming a framework in which new social and economic relationships are constructed. The direct empowerment of communities—through land ownership—leads to a reinterpretation of environmental and economic agendas to suit local needs.

The final paper in this special edition is my own. Like the Affordable Rural Housing Commission in 2006, and Hoggart and Henderson the year before, the article questions the lack of a systematic, plan-led, approach to affordable housing provision in ‘village England’. Existing discourse on rural housing issues lags some way behind the 30 years of recent debate on the ‘differentiation’ of the countryside. Policy remains grounded in the perception of a clear and general ‘rural housing problem’ characterized by overbearing external demand set in a context of constrained and limited housing supply. Because of the general logic of concentrating development in urban areas (where the need for services can most easily and efficiently be met, and where development is often possible within an existing footprint), this perception has some currency. But in much of the countryside, enough housing is being provided, albeit in market towns and other principal service centres. Rural housing issues, like rural areas themselves, are complex and spatially differentiated. The challenge that I address in the final paper is how best to respond to the continuing gentrification of villages, especially those villages that fall within the sphere of commuters or second-home hunters, and where affordability ratios create a barrier to housing access. I argue that too much emphasis has been placed on debating the ‘rights’ of local households and the ‘wrongs’ of conspicuous consumption. What is needed now is systematic supply solution and for villages to receive the fair share of the development they need.

Throughout these six papers, three key issues constantly resurface: issues of scale (and how challenges appear to differ depending on one’s level of analysis), community (including the need to work through community or build consensus around courses of action), and complexity. Rural housing problems are the product of a complex interplay of forces, creating geographically distinct social and economic outcomes. These have defied resolution for many years and, despite the recent round of planning reform and government inquiries, there is, as yet, little evidence that an end to these problems is in sight.

On the other hand, a willingness to think at different scales, to secure community-led solutions, and to acknowledge the complexity of the problems are all encouraging signs. And since th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1. New Agendas in Planning and Rural Housing
• 2. Urban–Rural Differences in Commuting in England: A Challenge to the Rural Sustainability Agenda?
• 3. Affordability and Supply: The Rural Dimension
• 4. English Rural Housing Market Policy: Some Inconvenient Truths?
• 5. Planning for an Ageing Population in Rural England: The Place of Housing Design
• 6. Community Land Ownership, Housing and Sustainable Rural Communities
• 7. Affordable Housing in ‘Village England’: Towards a More Systematic Approach
• Afterword – A New Politics of Planning in England?
• Index