Ask the Experts
Why Keir Starmer's pledge to build 1.5 million new homes in five years will be undone by his failure to engage with the experts charged with building them.
Steve Jobs is widely credited with the creation of the iPhone. Now there is no question that Jobs was super-smart. But, the truth is that Jobs was merely the visionary. He didn’t take himself away to study telecommunications, app development, lens manufacturing or audio engineering. Instead, he assembled a team of experts from each of these fields and many more besides. As Jobs himself once said: “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”
Similarly, Elon Musk might be one smart cookie, even if I do question his political ethics and ambitions. But he didn’t create the Tesla car alone. Once again, he assembled a crack team to redefine automotive engineering and to turn the car industry on its head.
In both instances, even while they were pushing the design envelope beyond previous limits, both Jobs and Musk needed guidance on what was possible, achievable and practical. And in each instance, they sought that guidance from the leaders in their various fields.
Now let’s look at Keir Starmer’s pledge to build 1.5 million new homes in the next five years. From a PR and optics perspective, that promise sounds great doesn’t its it? Who could possibly complain about such a commitment to tackle homelessness and bring the nation’s housing stock back up to scratch?
There’s an issue, however, because unlike Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, Starmer’s pledge is all vision and apparently no expertise.
In a letter to the editor of The Independent newspaper, a man called Graham Kelley summed up the feelings of those in the construction trenches:
“After a lifetime in housebuilding, construction generally, and finally construction education, I can categorically state that Starmer’s target of building 1.5 million houses in the next five years is impossible
Our existing resources in the industry would need to be doubled. The numbers of trades people, technical, management and professional staff have collapsed over my lifetime.
The existing infrastructure of training and technical education was destroyed at the altar of degree education, regardless of the implications.”
This is a view that is echoed by David McMaster, Associate Director at chartered surveyors Aldreds. He said: “It is laudable that the Government wants to build new homes. No one could really argue that. But is it not alarming that the Labour Party made these promises either without sound research into the obvious challenges of such a big project or was this a pledge they knew they could not deliver.”
Having apparently failed to consult those within the construction sector about the viability of his grand plan, Keir Starmer seems blissfully unaware of the glaring blind-spots in his vision.
He seems unaware that many of his planned 1.5 million homes could find themselves stuck in a planning system that is seemingly designed to prevent construction.
He seems unaware of the lack of skilled workers currently within the construction sector. Lord alone knows who he thinks is going to build all these houses.
He seems to be unaware that every house will need energy, water, sewage and roads. The residents of these new houses will also require schools, hospitals, doctors’ surgeries, retail stores where they buy their food.
Perhaps most telling of all, he seems to be totally unaware of the house-building sector’s track record. Even if the industry manages to build as many homes as it did during the peak periods over the past 70 years, we are likely to fall a good 400,000 short of the 1.5 million target.
Sadly, all of this typifies modern governments and their think-tanks, spin doctors and vote-winning strategists.
Everyone in construction has an opinion. In most cases, you don’t even need to ask - They will just tell you. There are 2.5 million people in the UK construction industry; all of them at the end of a telephone line; all of them quite capable of telling Keir Starmer and his cohorts the errors of their ways and the faults in their calculations.
The newly-formed Labour government could easily have seconded a team of industry experts from across the construction and house building sector. But they did not.
Which makes me think that the pledge of 1.5 million new homes in five years was not a promise they had any intention of fulfilling; t was merely a pre-election lever to put Keir Starmer in Number 10 Downing Street.
This topic was the subject of an in-depth discussion on today's after show chat. You can listen to the resulting podcast here.