A Conservative councillor compared the Labour government’s housing policy to the former socialist USSR regime in a passionate speech at a Rushcliffe Borough Council meeting.
Conservative Rushcliffe cabinet member Roger Upton made the comments, at the meeting on Thursday, September 18, as he called on his fellow councillors to write to Westminster, to contest mandatory targets for new homes across the UK.
Housing targets, which identify how many homes should be built in each local council area by a certain timescale, were introduced by the Conservative government in 2019.
In 2022, ex-PM Rishi Sunak scrapped them after opposition from his backbenchers.
But Labour reversed the decision this year after promising to reinstate the targets before their 2024 general election win.
Councillor Upton said: “I’ve brought this motion to full council this evening because this Conservative administration is passionate about managing housing development in our borough ourselves and at the same time safeguarding our greenfield and greenbelt land wherever we can.
“Frankly we are very capable of planning our own housing development and we have proved this by providing more homes in Rushcliffe in the last 10 years than anywhere else in Nottinghamshire, with a significant proportion of these meeting the affordable homes criterion.”
Labour wants to build 1.5m new homes in the UK by 2029 – the year when their current election term ends. Cllr Upton argued that this plan was “dead on arrival” and “”totally unrealistic” and said centralised state planning “will not work”.
He added: “We absolutely understand that there is a national housing shortage but we would say we’ve already stepped up to the plate, met our housing obligations and planned for our future housing in our draft Local Development Plan up to 2041 and enough is enough.
“We don’t need a centralised mandatory housing target forced on us by the socialist national government with its overtones of centralised state planning which was so familiar in the former USSR. Centralised state planning didn’t work then and in my opinion it won’t work now.”
Councillor Steve Calvert, opposing the motion on behalf of the Labour Group, referenced the Greater Nottingham Strategic Plan being worked on for the last few years by Rushcliffe, Broxtowe and the Nottingham city councils.
This plan made targets for housing completions up to 2041, and Rushcliffe voted the plan through with the targets in March this year.
Cllr Calvert also said the proposal, as part of Cllr Upton’s motion, that the government creates a new approach in identifying brownfield and city centre sites for housing development, and producing targets for them instead, had “little strategic merit”, accusing the Conservatives of funneling anti-city council and anti-Nottingham sentiment.
Independent Councillor Carys Thomas did not support the motion, but, saying she does “not particularly disagree” with Cllr Upton’s comments, proposed an amended motion, suggesting that the council could act itself rather than just writing to the government.
She said: “It’s all very well whinging to the government about it, but we need to take action ourselves. We are where we are with government policy and Rushcliffe needs to keep ahead of the curve on this rather than just reacting to events or behaving like a victim.”
She suggested the council meeting more regularly to assess the likelihood of meeting targets.
But Councillor Upton spoke out against the amendments, and a majority of councillors voted against them.
Mr Upton concluded: “If you believe in local democracy, that local officers know their area better than London-centric ministers and civil servants and want to preserve Rushcliffe’s green spaces and greenbelt from overdevelopment, then you should support this motion.”
The council voted through the motion by 29 votes to 12.
