The proof’s in the eating

They don’t all vote and some are unaware their member of parliament is the shadow housing minister. But the people in Grant Shapps’ Hertfordshire constituency feel strongly about housing.

With campaigning for this year’s general election intensifying, Inside Housing visited Welwyn Hatfield to find out what Mr Shapps’ constituents think of their MP’s national housing policies.

In his two-and-a-half years as the face of Conservative housing policy, the self-styled ‘energetic politician’ has often used examples from his own patch to back up his party’s ideas for meeting national housing needs. But do the people living there believe those ideas could actually work? And what do their reactions suggest about the way his policies - such as scrapping the regional planning system and introducing a council tax incentive scheme - will go down nationally?

Undoubtedly housing delivery is the most important nut for any housing minister to crack, and Mr Shapps’ key policies aim to do just that. Arguably, if they can work in his own back yard, which has a history of opposing developments, they can work anywhere.

An afternoon spent touring the two towns reveals kebab van owner Mehmet Kabala is unusual in supporting more affordable housing. More typical is Belinda Walsingham. ‘It’s all getting a bit crowded,’ sighs the 51-year-old as she tidies a display of garden ornaments outside a pet and garden store in Welwyn Garden City town centre. She is against building full stop. ‘It’s a big issue around here,’ she says. ‘Building has been fairly intensive over the last 10 to 15 years.’

Perhaps it was the Ms Walsinghams of this world that Mr Shapps had in mind last October when during a speech he labelled his constituents part of a ‘new generation of nimbys [people with a “not in my back yard” attitude]’. They were, he explained, ‘a direct response to the government’s own misguided attempt to force something to happen’.

Although their environment doesn’t appear overly cramped to an outsider, Welwyn Hatfield’s population has grown rapidly over recent years. Welwyn Hatfield Council estimates that the number of inhabitants rose by about 9 per cent to 106,700 over the six years between 2001 and 2007.
Under current government policy, the east of England plan states that 10,000 new homes should be built in Welwyn Hatfield by 2021. It’s hardly a popular plan. Indeed, for a long time Mr Shapps himself spearheaded the ‘No way to 10k’ campaign, which encouraged residents in the area to oppose it. He argued that Welwyn Hatfield had already agreed to build 5,800 homes within the specified time period and the extra 4,000 would push local infrastructure and services to breaking point.

Ultimately, Hertfordshire Council challenged the regional plans and last May the High Court ruled that the plans be quashed and reconsidered. Mr Shapps argues that it is the Labour government’s top-down targets, forced upon communities by regional development agencies, that are turning Ms Walsinghams across the UK against development. Which is why he wants to scrap them, incentivising development through a council tax matching scheme instead.

Evidence from Mr Shapps’ patch suggests this approach may calm those vehemently against development, the introduction of council tax incentives easing concerns about the pressure new homes place on services.

‘They’re not putting infrastructure in to deal with the housing they’re building - by that, I mean schools, roads and drainage,’ argues Ms Walsingham when making her case against further local development.

At present, the system works against local communities financially, Mr Shapps argues. He hopes that if residents such as Ms Walsingham could see investment in their town’s infrastructure, they would be more supportive of development.

The Conservative Party says that if it wins this year’s general election it will match pound-for-pound the council tax revenue received on all new homes for a period of six years, meaning that local authorities would double their council tax from the new builds. And there will be special incentives for social housing, with the Conservatives guaranteeing 125p for every pound received in council tax from new affordable homes.

‘Those 10,000 homes in my area would mean match funding of something like £100 million,’ Mr Shapps told the Institute for Public Policy Research last October, applying his policy to his own constituency. But Ms Walsingham remains convinced that undeveloped land is priceless. ‘There should be wide open spaces for people, but they’re slowly disappearing,’ she says.

Yes, these incentives may mean his council gets more money in return for housing development, argues Hatfield office worker Andy, who doesn’t want to give his surname. But it won’t persuade him to support Mr Shapps. ‘I don’t vote because I don’t see the point. And I don’t think this policy would make much of a difference to me. The extra money would probably go to Welwyn Garden City,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘Anyway, I’ve got my house, so it doesn’t really matter what happens to everyone else.’

There’s not much evidence of incentivisation working here - but Mr Shapps suggests that sceptics like Andy would be more supportive of his policy if they knew the extra money supplied to local authorities from a government kitty would be likely to be spent on schemes such as the long-awaited Hatfield town centre regeneration, which was first announced in 2002.

On the day of our visit, plans for the revised town centre scheme, including 97 residential units, are being showcased in an empty Pizza Hut unit on the edge of the town centre. Developer St Modwen, the Homes and Communities Agency and Welwyn Hatfield Council have scaled-down their original plan for a £100 million facelift which included 275 apartments, and a new planning application has been submitted.

A hairdresser working in a salon across the road agrees with Mr Shapps’ approach - any money that can help make the development happen, even if it is less ambitious than originally intended, will be well received by residents. ‘We need the development, we need more shops. People who live here find the town boring,’ she says.

In Welwyn Garden City, Paula Hills, 44, pictured below, agrees that council tax incentives are ‘a fairly good idea’ - she would favour the extra cash paying for the disabled parking permit she’s recently had to buy, on top of being charged for parking. She just hopes that the council insists on more affordable housing in Welwyn Hatfield. ‘They’re building lots of houses of a quarter of a million [pounds] upwards, but we need social housing desperately,’ she says.

Another of Mr Shapps’ housing policies, in keeping with the Conservatives’ drive towards localism, is the formation of local housing trusts. Inspired by the village of Essendon, just a few miles east of Hatfield, the Conservative local housing trusts solution has a particular type of community in mind - rural village populations which want to take control of small-scale housing developments in their localities. These communities may be perceived to be nimbys, but in fact, they do want certain types of housing to be built on particular sites, he argues.

Under a Conservative government, villages such as Essendon could create a community-led body with planning powers to develop local homes for local people. The party’s housing green paper, Strong Foundations, published last April, suggests communities could essentially provide themselves with permission to expand by a maximum of 10 per cent over any 10-year period, so long as they can demonstrate they have met various standard criteria. In particular, they will have to be able to show strong local approval for their planned development - with no more than 10 per cent opposition in a community referendum.

Leaders of groups that have opposed large-scale housing developments across the south east seem to like the idea. Vicky Newman chair of Communities Against Ford Ecotown, based in Arun, West Sussex, says that she and other CAFÉ campaign members ‘welcome anything that would empower local people’.

Although they actively opposed (ultimately unsuccessful) plans for a 5,000-home eco-town to be built on their doorstep, they support small scale developments which provide local people with the homes they need. ‘Our main concern was that central government seemed to be ignoring the community, concentrating on central statistics rather than local needs,’ explains Ms Newman. ‘People here would support proposals for social housing in small infill sites. The inflow of retiring couples to this area has meant that houses that used to be affordable are out of reach of first time buyers.’

David Bird, chair of Westborough, Broadacres & District Residents Association, based near Guildford in Surrey, also likes the local housing trusts policy. ‘It’s a good idea and I fully endorse the view that if 90 per cent of local people are in favour of any housing development, it should go ahead,’ he says. ‘But who would get to vote? People of the parish or the council ward generally?’ he asks.

Mr Bird is not the only one with unanswered questions. Back in Welwyn Hatfield some of Mr Shapps’ own constituents withhold judgement on how the policies of their MP of nearly five years would work. One Hatfield resident who’s out shopping with her husband in Welwyn Garden City, says that she can’t give an opinion without more details. ‘Where is the money coming from for this council tax incentive scheme,’ she asks, ‘and where is it going to go to?’

Aun Bhatti, 26, who earns a living by working as a security guard in the centre of Welwyn Garden City, also wants to know exactly how the money raised through this will be spent. ‘It sounds good,’ he says. ‘But it will only be an incentive if the money is spent properly.’

We gave Mr Shapps the chance to reply to the questions raised during our time in Welwyn Hatfield, but it’s clear that he needs to communicate the details of his policies more effectively with potential voters.

Judging by the reactions fielded by Inside Housing, anti-development groups across the south east broadly support the Conservatives’ idea of forming local housing trusts, but both they and the residents of Mr Shapps’ own constituency largely fail to see how the council tax incentive scheme would benefit the individual.

Even if the policy was crystal clear, it’s difficult to see how Mr Shapps could convince some of his constituents that housing development in their area is a positive thing. ‘I wouldn’t want more housing near me, especially if it was council housing,’ states Hatfield resident Angie Wells, 27. ‘Luckily there’s nowhere to build near my house.’

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