How to build more houses

Since the 1930s, bad planning has destroyed swathes of our most precious heritage while causing economic damage that, by some estimates, exceeds that of the second world war. We will end the disaster only if we learn from past mistakes.

The current war about housing targets and ‘concreting over the South East’ is the latest in a long line of — generally successful — revolts against government housebuilding plans. In the 1940s, jeering protestors coined the name ‘Silkingrad’ for housing minister Lewis Silkin’s new town of Stevenage. In the 1980s, Nicholas Ridley’s controversial boost in housebuilding was reversed when he was replaced by Chris Patten. And in 2010 the backlash against Labour’s regional targets led David Cameron to abolish them.

The English government’s long, bad record of deciding where people should live starts with Edward III’s Statute of Labourers, which met aristocratic complaints about rising wages after the Black Death by banning labourers from moving around the country to get better terms.