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On Tuesday he will outline a series of reforms to the planning system designed to appease Tory MPs who are worried about losing their seats at the next election while addressing the concerns of those who believe the Conservatives have given up on the idea of affordable home ownership in the face of Nimbyism.
Gove’s proposals are designed to walk a very thin line between the two.
For those concerned about the new, unwanted, development in their areas there will be new protections against building on the green belt or prime greenfield land.
There will also be additional powers for councils to prohibit development that could change the character of a particular area, such as building a large block of flats in the middle of a suburban neighbourhood.
But at the same time councils will be given three months to put local plans in place that identify land to be developed, that should, to a great extent, meet their local area’s future housing needs. Those that fail to do so will run the risk of having new developments forced upon them.
Councils will also face new scrutiny in how they handle planning applications. They will no longer be allowed to delay decisions on controversial schemes or turn down legitimate applications that are keeping with those local plans.
Those that do risk the “stick” that the government will strip them of their right to adjudicate planning applications altogether with the power passed to independent planning inspectors instead.
In an effort to meet the government’s own badly missed target of building 300,000 homes a year there will also be a big emphasis placed on creating higher density housing in cities [at the same time as protecting the suburbs?] such as London while Cambridge will have its own bespoke plan to build “northwards” of 150,000 new homes.
Gove himself claims that despite having missed the 300,000 target for each of the past five years since it was made a manifesto pledge it is now within sight. [actually the manifesto said 500,000k which assumed 4 year parliament, he will only hit 50-60% of 300k a year target – entirely disingenuous].
“If you see interest rates going back to where they should be, then we can easily meet it [the 300,000] in the next parliament,” he says.
Critics, not least the Labour Party and the housebuilding industry, argue that Gove’s changes are little more than window dressing to a complete capitulation to Nimbyism.
They point out that the reforms were forced onto him by Tory MPs last year and say that they will allow councils to legitimately designate too little land for development to meet their local housing need.
So is he just giving into Nimbyism? “No no, absolutely not. No.” he insists.
“[But] you can’t say that reasonable grounds for being wary about development should simply be discounted. You can’t simply say they are irrational.
“You would not want to change the character of attractive suburban areas where there are already existing family homes. [the classic American Nimby argument fior retaining single family zoning]. The whole point about planning is that it’s about the thoughtful use of land, what we will do is to give people an opportunity to protect that which is reasonable.”
Gove’s argument is that by giving communities a greater say on where and what type of housing is built in their area the conflict will be taken out of the planning process and that development will be seen once again as a positive thing.
“I want to see development, I want to see growth, I want to see the sort of excitement about new development that we had when London was expanding in the 19th century and when Leeds and Newcastle were growing. [which is why he breifs teh Sun about how he is stopping concreting over the countryside.]
“If we can clear the obstacles [to development] away, then we can get excited about the future and about development again.”
A new development corporation will help to build new housing in Cambridge and its surrounding areas
Gove says nowhere is this more true than Cambridge, where he will announce plans to build an additional 150,000 properties in the city and surrounding area, setting up a new development corporation and putting government money into new transport networks and upgrading other infrastructure.
“The combination of Cambridge’s intrinsic attractiveness, but also what’s happening in life sciences and tech, means that we can build there in a way that future generations will think, ‘Well, that was a rediscovery of ambition of a kind that had appeared to be fading’.”
Yet highlighting the challenges of the scheme behind Gove’s desk is a map of the city showing the existing city, the green belt around it and blue and purple blocks marking where the new houses might go.
Some of the purple and blue blocks are clearly marked on existing green belt land. Gove accepts this, saying that there will be “certain circumstances” when it will be necessary to “redesignate” green belt land.
But he insists that the overall plans will improve the city’s water supply and enhance biodiversity overall.
“Grasses and meadows are not going to disappear. We’re going to make sure that we can present a coherent package which we hope people will recognise has an inherent logic.”
Gove is aware that the plan will have its critics; the Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire, Anthony Browne, has previously described it as “nonsense”.
But he is perhaps hoping that by inflicting a lot of pain on a small area, the Conservatives will be able to go into the next election squaring the circle of meeting its overall housing targets while reducing the pain in the constituencies that it is defending against the Liberal Democrats. [no 150k over 40 years is less than 3 months national housing supply].
But with the polls suggesting a Tory revival at the moment looks unlikely, what does Gove hope his legacy will be?
Quickly adding that he hopes to be doing his job for “years to come” he cites levelling up, building safety reform in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire and devolving power from Westminster to local government.
It is, he suggests, a theme running throughout everything he has done in more than a decade in the cabinet. “I think it’s a programme of, as the foreign secretary would have put it, of modern, compassionate Conservatism.”
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions 