Lesley Riddoch: New Towns can't solve Scotland's housing problems

It's crazy to think our housing needs can only be delivered in large dormitory-like estates, says Lesley Riddoch

Livingston under construction, 1964. The creation of New Towns was opposed by the Tories after the war.

Ruth Davidson’s speech on housing was under-examined last week – no wonder.

Many Scots were doubtless somewhat amused at the jaw-dropping cheek of a Tory discussing a housing crisis her party helped create – from Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy which robbed councils of their best social housing stock, to David Cameron’s world of austerity and zero-hour contracts which has put mortgages beyond reach for tens of thousands of workers.

Last week a BBC Scotland survey found the average person saving ten per cent of their take-home pay would need eight years to save a deposit – ten years in property hot-spots, like Edinburgh. As Shelter Scotland pointed out, young people are caught between rising property prices and increasingly expensive rents, with home ownership “often actually just a dream”.

So has Ruth Davidson waved a magic wand over this long-standing and vexed problem? Not really.

In her speech, the Scottish Tory leader argued for more new villages like Chapelton of Elsick near Aberdeen, where landowners, developers and the council came together to design a new community. She backs a plan calling for the construction of eight new towns in Scotland, new powers for councils, a new Housing Infrastructure Agency and a Housing Minister in the Scottish Cabinet to make it all happen and ensure 25,000 homes a year get built.

The plan got grudging plaudits for at least highlighting the housing crisis with a sense of urgency. And let’s be honest, it also served to upstage Nicola Sturgeon who will respond to electoral setbacks and constant jibes about neglecting the day job when she launches the Scottish Government’s proposed education, health, justice, economic and housing reforms tomorrow.

But there are better, more progressive – though also less headline-grabbing - solutions for the housing crisis than the Scottish Conservatives’ late conversion to the cause of the New Town.

Ironically, the Tories opposed the very idea of New Towns after the war. Under their 1950s governments, New Town proposals in the west of Scotland - like Houston in Ayrshire - were vetoed. Cumbernauld went ahead, but Glasgow Council was made to pay for the resettlement. The Tories argued that New Towns used up good farmland and privately worried they would bring working class Labour voters into the Tory shires. Indeed, Ruth Davidson’s proposals today look likely to create middle class developments in the leafier suburbs of eastern Scotland rather than genuinely affordable settlements in the poorer and post-industrial west.

Furthermore the New Town model itself has problems. Land developers currently pay astronomical amounts for land and therefore cut quality, increase density, shrink house sizes and provide relatively few amenities to turn a profit. Ruth Davidson’s “big bang” housing developments are a step up from Castlemilk and Easterhouse, but may be just as unlikely to create thriving mixed communities. When vast developments are first proposed, a new school is often thrown in as a sweetener. But once it’s built, neighbouring school rolls decline endangering their own future until the new school also dwindles as one generation of kids leaves school at the same time.

Generationally and socially, mixed small developments in or near existing communities - like the 1980s ground-breaking GEAR (Glasgow Eastern Area Renewal) - work far better. With many small housing developments instead of one “big bang”, new families help save existing schools, pubs, churches and community centres instead of diverting demand and energy away from them.

Back in the 50s, Lothian Planner Frank Mears argued against New Towns - he was the son-in-law of Patrick Geddes, often regarded as the father of Scottish planning (and much besides). Mears argued for an expansion of housing around existing cultural centres - like Newbattle near Dalkeith - precisely because bigger New Towns distort existing settlements.

But New Towns, new villages and new large suburbs do go ahead for a number of reasons.

They conform to a relatively quick, “no-nonsense,” big is beautiful approach that appeals to politicians.

They also release cash in a way that suits developers and cash-strapped councils.

But the communities created may not be vibrant, mixed, empowered or full of genuinely affordable homes.

Ironically, a project that sought to deliver a progressive New Town was kiboshed three years ago. In 2014, South Lanarkshire Council rejected plans for a new co-operatively owned and managed New Town called Owenstown because it wasn’t on their development plan. The £500m investment – based on Robert Owen’s New Lanark – was made possible by smart thinking some years earlier when a charity bought 2,000 acres of cheap farmland. Their aim was to transfer the rise in land values after planning permission to the 8,000 new residents - not commercial developers - and create affordable, high-quality housing with the social facilities of a real town, not a giant, faceless housing estate.

Remarkably 3,200 new homes, new jobs and two new schools were offered at no cost to the public purse while the Scottish housing waiting list stood at 160,000. Yet, after four frustrating years - during which 23 ethically oriented businesses expressed an interest in moving in - local planners said No. The land is still sitting there – so is the proposal. If South Lanarkshire’s new SNP administration wants a progressive New Town built fast, they can pick up the phone and contact the Owenstown folk today.

It’s crazy to think Scotland’s housing needs can only be delivered in large, dormitory-like housing estates by commercial developers who are really land acquisition specialists.

It’s also crazy to think our housing problems can be solved without tackling the big structural problems that bedevil post-feudal Scotland. The only party with genuinely radical proposals are the Scottish Greens, who want to give councils power to buy land for housing at ‘existing use’, not development value and to end the 100 per cent tax relief on Scotland’s 11,000 hectares of vacant and derelict land. Their land tax proposal would also tackle Scotland’s uniquely concentrated pattern of land ownership, where scarcity keeps prices high. Indeed land often forms half the cost of a house here – in neighbouring European countries it’s more like 10 to 15 per cent.

Now I doubt Ruth Davidson will back such truly radical proposals – the big question is whether Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP will seriously consider these genuinely radical, workable, low-key, non headline-grabbing measures which could yet transform housing in Scotland.