“Are you a builder or a blocker?” is not the question we should be asking
4 min read
The dichotomised way in which we are talking about housing doesn't reflect our true intentions. Housebuilding should be a collective effort – not a fight.
As the Labour MP for East Thanet, I know how urgent the need for new homes is. Every week, I hear from young people who can’t get on the housing ladder, families trapped in insecure rentals, or adults still living with their parents into their thirties. The majority of my constituents recognise that we need more homes — the question is where and how we build them.
East Thanet is unique: surrounded by sea on three sides and by Kent’s beautiful farmland on the other. This geography makes the debate over development especially intense. People care deeply about protecting our natural environment, but they also want to see the next generation have the chance to stay, live, and thrive here.
The real issue isn’t whether to build, but how to build well. Instead of thoughtful planning, we too often see green spaces replaced with sprawling, disconnected estates that lack the necessary infrastructure — no GP surgery, no school, not even a reliable bus route. These developments frequently feel imposed, unaffordable for local people, and out of step with the character of the area. The consequences of failed planning rules are a strong illustration of why the rules must change.
The government’s proposed Planning and Infrastructure Bill offers an important reset, by reversing the Coalition’s decision to scrap regional spatial strategies — a change that left local areas without coherent development plans. But the bill’s potential to build a new public consensus on planning risks being lost beneath confrontational rhetoric about “builders” and “blockers” that jars with people’s concerns about their local areas.
We must resist the urge to frame local people as the problem. People care about the countryside and nature, and polls tell us that after the NHS, it’s the thing we love most about this country – uniting voters across the political spectrum. We shouldn’t be painting people as the enemy for this, and in the process alienating them from this national mission. Shaping a place to ensure it’s an affordable and nice place to live, including access to nature, is what our changes are all about, and yet our language does not reflect our intentions.
I completely reject the argument that we can go on resisting building anywhere but brownfield sites, or that we do not need to build 1.5 million new homes. But I fear that what’s missing is a clear, positive vision. What people need to hear is not just the number of new homes but the kind of communities we want to create. That means putting schools, GP surgeries, green spaces, and public transport at the heart of development, and integrating sustainability from the outset. Our planning bill can and should do that, and people need to know that it will.
We need to rebuild people’s trust in the system, not undermine it further. From encouraging swift boxes in new homes to protecting chalk streams, the symbols of our love of nature are as important as the substance of a framework that will last. After all, nature has been trashed under the current rules, so we should be able to show people that a new framework can deliver new homes and deliver for our natural environment.
We also need to hold developers accountable, not suggest we are their champion. When ministers say they’re backing “builders, not blockers,” they suggest they are on the side of corporate housebuilders rather than the people who need the new homes. Developers are a means to an end, not the end in itself, and we must hold them to higher standards. All new homes should have solar panels on them, for example, and we should ignore the developers’ howls when they oppose every effort to improve the quality and standard of the houses they make a handsome profit from building.
Britain has faced a moment like this before. Out of the ashes of the Second World War, Clement Attlee’s Labour government built a million new homes and delivered the dream of high-quality affordable housing to hundreds of thousands of ordinary families. As we enter Labour’s decade of national renewal, we need to recapture some of that postwar spirit of solidarity and optimism.
Housebuilding should be a collective effort – not a fight. Let’s move beyond divisive rhetoric and work together to ensure everyone can have a safe and affordable roof over their head.
Polly Billington is the Labour MP for East Thanet.
