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‘People need homes’: Davey pressed on ‘nimbyism’ at Lib Dem party conference
The leader of the Liberal Democrats was pressed on his party’s reputation for nimbyism at its conference in Brighton, after he reiterated his support for a “community-led” approach to planning.
During a question and answer session with Sir Ed Davey on Sunday, Carolyn Quinn, a BBC journalist, said, “You and your party and some of your MPs have been accused of being nimbys”, before adding “you can’t have it both ways” and that “we need to get on with building because people need homes”.
She asked the question after Sir Ed answered a query on how to square housing demand with environmental protections.
Ms Quinn, who was reading out submitted questions, said: “To sustain our electoral success, particularly in the South, how do we square the circle of increased population and housing demand with necessary environmental protections?”
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Sir Ed said: “I’ve always felt that our approach, which has been tried in a number of places and worked really well, when you engage the community about the housing and about the challenges that means to any community, is the right approach.
“We’ve called it a community-led approach, as opposed to the developer-led approach we’ve seen for decades. We changed the law quite a few years ago to allow neighbourhood planning.”
Neighbourhood planning is the right communities have to shape developments in their local areas. The coalition government introduced it through the Localism Act 2011.
In their manifesto, the Liberal Democrats pledged to deliver 380,000 homes per year, including 150,000 for social rent, and give councils the power to end the Right to Buy in their areas.
The party said it would deliver the homes through new garden cities, community-led developments and by expanding neighbourhood planning.
Sir Ed said: “Neighbourhood planning is very much like the community-led approach that we advocate, where the community comes together and says, ‘Yes, we’ll have these extra houses, that’s a good place to build them, but we need so many to be affordable, we need water infrastructure built, we need NHS infrastructure built’.
“That approach has been tried following the rule that we changed, and a government study of the results of that show that it was really successful, that more homes got built, that they were more in tune with the needs of the local community.
“I think we need to stick to our guns. We need a community-led approach to planning to build the homes that we need and make sure that they are built in a sustainable way.”
Ms Quinn said: “But what you call a community-led approach, other people say is nimbyism, and you and your party and some of your MPs have been accused of being nimbys, opposing schemes.
“Lib Dem-run councils have opposed schemes, for example in South Oxfordshire.
“You yourself described proposals for thousands of homes being built in Surrey, near your constituency, as ‘eye-watering’. You can’t have it both ways, can you?
“You’ve just got to get rid of some of these regulations, the planning logjams, and get on with building because people need homes.”
Ms Quinn was referring to comments made by the party leader in 2022, when he described government housebuilding targets in Surrey as “eye-watering”.
Sir Ed said he “absolutely agrees” that people need homes.
He said there was a “whole long list of where the Liberal Democrats” were building.
“But the point is that every individual site needs to be judged on its merits. I don’t think anyone thinks we should just build anywhere. There are a whole range of things that need to be taken into account,” Sir Ed said.
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