Simon Jenkins is a good journalist and a good historian. But it seems that he is also something of a Jekyll and Hyde character.
As Chairman of the National Trust he is running a misleading and dishonest campaign against the government’s sensible planning reforms. The Trust believes that the planning process should be completely neutral and should not promote growth. They don’t appear to want a single scrap of countryside to be built upon, (even though they themselves built 200 homes in the grounds of their Cliveden estate in the heart of the green belt.)
But Simon Jenkins the journalist thinks that London needs a new airport and that it should be built upon the “wilderness” of the North Kent Marshes - much to the annoyance of local countryside campaigners. Writing in the Evening Standard on the 20th September he describes the North Kent marshes as “ a wilderness of marginal farms, oil terminals, squatter settlements and acres of mud and marsh. Is it not the best place for a vast fourth London international airport?”
I was so shocked by this example of double standards that I asked the National Trust to confirm if building a massive airport on the “wilderness” of Kent was their official policy. Their response was: “This article wasn’t written in Simon Jenkins’ capacity as National Trust chairman.” What! Can you imagine the Chair of the HCA lobbying for affordable housing and then writing an article saying that all social housing should be sold off? He would be sacked on the spot.
Simon Jenkins the National Trust Chairman seems to be very badly briefed. In an article in The Times on the 20th Sept he makes a schoolboy howler with his figures, claiming that the green belts and areas of outstanding natural beauty represent only 14% of rural England. In fact they represent about 31% of the whole area of England. With the National Parks and SSIS a total of 45 percent of England is protected, and will continue to be protected under the draft National Planning Policy Framework.
In the same article Jenkins goes on to make a couple of ludicrous statements: “Builders are not interested in so-called brownfield sites because they are less desirable.” So builders weren’t interested in Canary Wharf, Westfield and a host of other urban regeneration projects? Has he never heard of Location, Location, Location? Then he writes: “As for defining as “sustainable” anything that yields jobs or profit, this is palpably absurd.” I don’t think the thousands of people employed in sustainable forestry or organic farming would agree with that statement.
To be honest I’m not quite clear why the National Trust is so engaged in the NPPF fight and why they are being taken so seriously by the Daily Telegraph and others. Not a single National Trust property will be affected by the NPPF proposals, and as I have written before, even if we built 250,000 homes a year for the next ten years only around a third of one percent of countryside would be affected by new housing. I know that many National Trust members are troubled by their latest campaign and will be concerned about the apparent hypocrisy of their Chairman.
The fact is that we will have to build at least 5 million homes over the next twenty years to redress past under-supply and deal with household growth (nearly 6 million new households will form by 2033). No more than 2 to 3 million of these new homes can be built within existing urban areas, which leaves 2 million to be built beyond the urban envelope. That is a long-term reality that countryside campaigners simply cannot ignore. Over the past three weeks I have repeatedly asked the National Trust and the CPRE to point me to their detailed policies on housing and population growth, setting out how they would meet the housing needs of the country. They have declined to do so. The truth is that that they have no credible policies on growth. Their policy is no more sophisticated than “Keep off our Land.” I much prefer Inside Housing’s “Get on our Land” campaign.
The problem is that the voices of the homeless and badly housed are not being heard in this debate. It is the well housed and the well heeled who are dominating the discourse. But the National Trust does not speak for me and I hope it does not speak for you either. As the Trust’s Director General Fiona Reynolds once said, “The Trust, I’ll be honest, can be seen as an organisation that’s middle-class and slightly remote.”
I think that hits the nail on the head.
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Readers' comments (6)
F451 | 22/09/2011 9:52 am
Good article Colin, but it ignores the requirement of representation and representative views. It is often the role of a Chair to be a figurhead for the concensus view, even if that view is not their own preference. Even journalists find that they must 'toe the party line' when their Editor tells them what their view must be.
What is true however is that conserving the countryside whilst conserving the economy whilst meeting the needs of the people requires more flexibility than rhetorical standpoints permit.
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Anonymous | 22/09/2011 10:42 am
Anyone who reads Simon Jenkins regularly knows he's a scrupulous journalist where honesty of thought and opinion is a given.
Unlike our reporter here. Too tedious to read in detail, but I couldn't help catching that bit about "the voices of the homeless and badly housed".
Isn't it just a tad disengenuous to wheel in their interests as a ragged fig-leaf for the interests of the property industry, including social landlords, looking for a fast buck.
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Colin Wiles | 22/09/2011 11:23 am
Anonymous thanks for your anonymous comment. It would be helpful to know what your particular background is in this debate. As I say, he is a good journalist but the fact that he is facing both ways on this issue is something that should concern the public and NT members in particular. I won't bother top respond to your last comment.
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Welsh Dragon | 22/09/2011 11:40 am
Just out of interest does anyone know what happened to the National Trust's proposed "urban village" at Erdigg in Wrexham, which was for around 200 homes on National Trust land just outside Wrexham.
As far as I am aware this was the National Trust proposing to develop housing on a greenfield site.
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Ben Cowell | 22/09/2011 4:35 pm
Colin - You and I have had a few exchanges on Twitter, so it's not quite true to imply that NT has not engaged with you so far. The Trust has welcomed the Prime Minister's intervention this week, and his reaffirmation of the need for balance in the planning system. Fiona Reynolds set out some of our specifics this morning at an event organised by the BPF with Greg Clark, so I hope we are now seeing some sensible discussions about how we ensure the NPPF meets the PM's personal aspirations for a properly balanced approach (see http://www.propertyweek.com/news/national-trust-unveils-nppf-shopping-list-at-heated-debate/5025022.article for a report of the BPF event)
You ask why the NPPF is such a big issue for us. Our charitable purposes oblige us to promote places of historic interest and natural beauty of all kinds, and not just those that we happen to own. Even if that was not the case, it is not true to say that no NT property will be affected. The setting of our properties is a constituent part of their significance, and so we have a direct interest as property owners too.
One of our founders, Octavia Hill, was one of the original campaigners for social housing and decent homes. She saw no conflict between the provision of houses, and the supply of sufficient open space and natural beauty for people to enjoy - 'open air sitting rooms', as she called them.
You begin your article by drawing attention to our housing scheme at Cliveden, and end it by saying that we are not interested in growth or houses. You can't have it both ways, surely?
We are very much interested in ensuring that there are sufficient houses, but also in making sure that the decisions that are made now are properly thought through with the long term in mind.
We probably won't be issuing detailed policy recommendations on population growth, mind.
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Colin Wiles | 22/09/2011 9:54 pm
Ben thanks for your response. I'm not sure who you are on twitter. I hadn't said that the NT had not engaged with me, but that they had declined to point me towards their policies on housing and growth. You obviously don't have any. It seems to me pointless for the govt to enter into a dialogue with you or the CPRE unless you are prepared to accept that we will need to build beyond the urban fabric over the next twenty years. You seem intent on sticking your heads in the sand over long-term population & housing growth and you clearly wish that the issue would go away. It seems to me it would be better to discuss this in a rational way now rather than deal with a crisis ten years from now, when development pressures could be worse and mistakes could be made.
I don't think building on your own land at Cliveden (in the green belt) can be held up as example of the NT wanting growth or houses. That's just slightly disingenuous, a case of do as I say not as I do, surely?
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