‘The right homes in the right places,’ seems an innocuous, inoffensive phrase.

It straddles tense discussions about a broken housing market that’s weaponised and misunderstood in equal measure.

The Prime Minister deployed the term in the government’s latest pledge to ‘turbo-charge’ housebuilding by streamlining planning for development sites in towns and cities across England.

Although all that’s happening at this stage is another consultation (which I will return to), the statement led the news on Tuesday.

It taps into what some see as a dividing line between the government’s focus on previously developed – or ‘brownfield’ – land and Labour’s recent commitment to develop new towns. As the election draws nearer, it’s likely to spark heated debate.

Continue reading “What? How? Where? Questions on the brownfield housing push” →