Is it a gaggle of NIMBYs? Or is it a pack of NIMBYs? Or maybe a swarm of NIMBYs? The Oxford Dictionary of the beautiful English Language doesn’t actually provide a collective and I want to make the case for “A Council of NIMBYs”.
The other day I choked on my morning granola and lactose free yogurt when I read an article in The Times that said an astonishing 55 councils have “suspended their development plans” as a result of ministers capitulating “to anti-development backbenchers” (remember the 100 rebel backbenchers from last year?)
So I dispatched The Times with its depressing news to the recycling bin and got the “i” (formerly known as the independent) and thought I would have better luck with my granola in a left-wing echo chamber… no such luck! This time my Fairtrade Kenyan bean oat milk cappuccino exited through my nose…
The paper said (and I quote) “An overwhelming majority of Brits – 82 per cent – also agreed that it was difficult for young people in the UK to access adequate housing… Of those who voted Conservative in the 2019 general election, the overwhelming majority – 80 per cent – thought it was difficult for young people to access adequate housing. This compared to 88 per cent who voted Labour.”
This is the electorate having their say and they are overwhelmingly in favour of homes. Now we all know that is influenced by things like “we want new homes, just not near us”… the mantra of the NIMBY but surely, surely with those sorts of figures planning applications should be welcomed with open arms and council candidates in the coming weeks should be campaigning on promises of granting more planning permissions and building more homes.
The answer of course lies in the deafening noise NIMBYs can make. There is a truly bewildering story in Planning Resource of a planning committee member who first of all sent text messages, then wrote some e-mails and eventually had a snooze during a planning committee meeting. The application then went down 7-6 and naturally the applicant raised this with the planning department (of course the committee dished up some flimsy reason to hide the real reason (“there is an election coming and we’re going to lose”).
The committee was then invited to pay attention, not sleep, and reconsider the application and then duly granted it permission. Only to then have a rich NIMBY bankroll a Judicial Review on some spurious grounds that none of the NIMBYs saw any councillor asleep or not paying attention… All of this for 14 homes! 14 much needed homes in the commuter belt about 1/2 hour out of central London.
At this stage I was crying into what remained of my breakfast.
We really do need a groundswell of YIMBYs in this country to turn things around and make building more homes an election winning issue.
We’ll get there one day; I hope it’s not before we all move to retirement homes because they can’t seem to get permission either!
Until next week,
Henry
