Head of Girton College says ‘business as usual’ attitude won’t solve broken system

Housing Challenge panel, Futurebuild

(l to r) Heather Cheesbrough, Paul Chatterton, Susan Smith and panel chair, Design England’s Jane Briginshaw

Rampant financial inequality in the UK was a major factor behind the current housing crisis, a session at yesterday’s Ecobuild conference, part of the annual Futurebuild show at London’s Excel centre, heard.

Professor Susan Smith, mistress of Girton College and honorary professor of geography at Cambridge University, told the Housing Challenge – More Than Houses session that with some political imagination the UK could have a housing system that is less dependent on debt and is more socially enabling.

But the financial crash and the inability of successive governments to change course had meant reform was next to impossible, she said.

“They have chosen to adopt the policy of ‘business as usual’. We have a crisis of affordability. Rates of attainment among young people have plummeted worldwide. And new financial schemes have failed to bridge that gap and possibly never will.

“We need a joined up plan to tackle the causes behind what is the most economically unequal society for a century.”

Heather Cheesbrough, director of planning and strategic transport, Croydon Council, said local authorities wanted to favour sustainable development, but that approach often ran into problems “because planning is inherently political”.

Cheesbrough said her authority had lots of small sites that were currently being developed by Brick by Brick, the council’s own development arm. “Brick by Brick has pushed forward our thinking regarding small sites. It’s looking to develop sites that other developers won’t touch and has 1,300 homes consented or in the planning stage.”

Political will was vital to solving housing issues, Cheesbrough said, and took aim at government cuts to local authorities. Part of the solution to resolving the slow progress being made to build homes would be “to properly resource planning departments. And we need to attract young people into the planning profession if we are going to solve the crises governments throw at us.”

And Paul Chatterton, professor of urban futures, Leeds University and author of ‘Unlocking Sustainable Cities: A Manifesto for Real Change’, called for a series of radical changes to empower local communities.

“We need to break the deadlock that is creating the problems we face, from the way we build and the materials we build with, like concrete, through to unsustainable development. We also need to reclaim some citizen control over the construction of our homes. And we need to end the corrosive landbanking practices of some developers.”