Last month, the Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, Robert Colvile, tweeted about a CPS publication from 1990 which was far ahead of its time: NIMBYism – The Disease And The Cure by Richard Ehrman. Although written in the early stages of (what we now call) Britain’s housing crisis, the author already demonstrated a much better understanding of the issue than, for example, a typical Guardian contributor writing about it today.
The CPS booklet has certainly aged like a fine wine. Were it not for the occasional giveaway (for example, when Ehrman talks about German Reunification in the future tense), you could almost think that it was published last week.
Nonetheless: in the spirit of friendly competition between Westminster’s free-market think tanks, I would like to point out that the Institute of Economic Affairs already got there two years earlier. The IEA book No Room! No Room! The Costs of the British Town and Country Planning System by Prof Alan Evans, published in 1988, already tells you almost everything you need to know about Britain’s housing crisis.
Prof Evans’s overall assessment of the system is simple:
‘The planning system has an impact on the process of development in a way which was not foreseen by those who originally devised it. […] The planning system has evolved over time from a system designed to guide development into what is regarded by the planners as ‘socially optimal’ land use into a system to control and restrict development’ [p. 34].
Why is that a problem?
Because ‘if […] development is prevented […], there is an economic cost to this lost development which is seen in higher prices and a lower standard of living. […] [T]here is a connection between spiralling house prices in the South East and the reluctance of the counties and districts to permit development. But the costs of the planning system are not limited to higher house prices. These are only the most evident of economic costs’ [p. 14].
Which sounds plausible enough. But is there any evidence for it?
According to Prof Evans – yes, there very much is. First of all, we have indirect evidence from abroad:
‘To obtain such evidence we must study a variety of urban areas which are otherwise similar but differ in the amount of land which is available for development. This cannot be done in Britain where all cities are subject to similar constraints on development. It can be done in other countries, however’ [p. 19].
