A veteran Conservative politician has accused his own party of hypocrisy over housing policy, arguing Tory MPs who routinely oppose new developments in their constituencies then simultaneously call for Britain’s housing crisis to be solved.

Simon Cooke (main image), former Deputy Leader of Bradford Council, tells Conservative Home that the party must abandon ‘NIMBY politics’ and embrace housing development in high-demand areas if it wants to offer credible housing solutions.

Classic nimbyism

He gives the example of Blake Stephenson, MP for Mid Bedfordshire, for taking the classic NIMBY position when he said: ‘I’m in favour of new housing but there are lots of reasons why the new housing needs to be somewhere else’.”

Cooke instead argues the party must return to its historical role as champions of suburbanisation rather than defending restrictive planning.

A real bricks-and-mortar stake in the nation makes for better citizens, stronger businesses and a safer, more prosperous society.”

“More than anything else, the Conservative Party has always been the party of suburbia,” and adds that having “a real bricks-and-mortar stake in the nation makes for better citizens, stronger businesses and a safer, more prosperous society.”

Drawing on his own village of Cullingworth, which has accepted nearly 500 new homes over the past decade, Cooke explains how development revitalises communities rather than damaging them.

The village, he says, now boasts two pubs, an award-winning butcher, post office, Co-op store and GP surgery – amenities that would not have been sustained without the influx of more people.

“Yet across England, and especially in the South’s green belt, people are trying to tell us that their dying village without most of these amenities is threatened by a few new houses.”

A better way

His planning reform proposals include allowing people to build houses on land they own, automatic brownfield permissions in villages, strategic green belt releases, and presumed development rights near transport hubs.

He claims Labour has dodged real planning reform and will fail to fix the country’s housing problems. And, with Reform, the Liberal Democrats, and Greens firmly in the ‘no more housing’ camp, he believes this is a chance for the Conservatives to set out policies that will make a real difference.