Bring Building Back

The solution to our economic woes lies in unleashing our building potential

The year is 1979. Beholden to trade union leaders, strikes have left Britain in disarray. In the wake of the Winter of Discontent, descriptions of Britain as the "sick man of Europe" seemed apt; such a label is not out of place today. Like James Callaghan was then, much of our political class seems to be on the beach in the Bahamas, with their heads in the sand while catastrophe awaits. Cures to our malaise are available, but the anti-growth coalition that dominates Britain refuses to enact any policy that capitalises on the resources — human or physical — available to us.

Even among information economies, Britain is blessed with its array of world-class higher education institutions. Despite this, no considered effort has been made in converting this abundance of talent into economic prosperity. None of the world's ten largest biomedical companies are British. World-class universities are the key ingredient for the flourishing of competitive, high-skill industries; Silicon Valley would not be the world leader without Stanford, nor would Wall Street be viable without the Ivy League. High concentrations of talent serve as ideal selection pools for businesses. Given this, it seems that infrastructure development in the Oxford-Cambridge region would be the policy focus of any government looking to break the American hold on large life science companies and turn Britain into a "science and technology superpower".

Feigning serious policy, in February 2021, the Government, alongside representatives from the concerned counties, issued a "joint declaration" for the development of the region. While the plans rightly identified the construction of East West Rail, which would run between the two cities, as well as one million new homes by 2050, as key, they missed the mark on industrial development. Crucially, no official documents have made reference to the two cities' chronic shortage of laboratory space. While Oxford requires 860,000 square feet more in laboratory space, just 20,000 square feet is available to rent. In Cambridge, the situation is even more dire; requirements outstripping 1,000,000 square feet are met by a measly 7,200. By contrast, the greater Boston area, which also has two of the world's life science universities in Harvard and MIT, will see 15,000,000 square feet of laboratory space under construction in the next three years. Our cities cannot grow to the status of superpower competitors while fettered by slow-moving central and local authorities. 

Government endeavours to get things done are resisted in earnest by the anti-growth coalition. Last week, Conservative MP for South Cambridgeshire Anthony Browne threatened to do "everything I can" to stop housebuilding in north-east Cambridge on the grounds that the area was suffering water shortages. However reasonable his argument might seem, it ignores the fact that the same slow-to-build biases that undergird Browne's opposition to new housing have also prevented the development of reservoirs in the Cambridge area. Britain's insistence on upholding the labyrinth of local consultations and restrictive planning permission regulations means that, according to Browne, constructing two reservoirs in the area will take nearly twenty years to build.  Contrast this protracted process with the eleven years it took Israel to build an eighty-mile-long water carrier in a desert. 

By definition, ending the bureaucracy means enabling executive action. The Government should first reclaim power by forcing councils to re-instate their local development plans; the cession of power to the councils this April has meant that the future of homebuilding is vulnerable in fifty-five local authorities. Moving forwards, the Government should re-instate its 2018 plans to centralise planning permissions in cases where local authorities had failed to have a sufficient number of homes built. In Westminster and Whitehall, however, there must be an acknowledgement that curing Britain of its low-growth, high-cost economy means bringing building back.

Dreaming Spires and Science Dreams