In a new series, CapX is celebrating the way our planning system tries its very best to save the country from affordable housing or decent infrastructure. This week, Nimbyism in Essex has resulted in one of the strangest results from the recent local elections…
Where? Castle Point.
Sorry, where? Southern Essex, a peri-urban landscape wedged between Basildon and Southend, in the brownfield-heavy part of the country the Blair government briefly and optimistically attempted to rebrand ‘the Thames Gateway’. The borough was created in 1974 from the merger of two urban districts, and took one half of its name from a landmark in each: Hadleigh Castle in Benfleet, and Canvey Point on Canvey Island.
The more you know. So what are they planning to build? Here’s the thing: nothing.
Great start. But the fight to build nothing has resulted in one of the weirdest results of the recent local elections.
Once upon a time, Castle Point used to be a bit of a bellwether, and was held by Labour from its creation until 1976, and again from 1995 to 2003. As with many down at heel districts lining the coast east of London, though, it’s shifted noticeably to the right in recent years, and in the last few has slipped away from the Tories, too. First came the Canvey Island Independent Party, which since 2004 has been demanding to know why a proudly independent landmass should have to put up with rule by the mainland. Then, in 2021, came the People’s Independent Party, a group of previously independent councillors brought together by their opposition to a local plan for 5,000 new homes, like a sort of nimby Avengers Initiative.
And I’m assuming all the opposition was entirely sane and normal. One elderly resident described the plan as a ‘death sentence‘, yes. To be fair, there do seem to be legitimate questions about how much of the rezoned land was on flood plain, or whether Canvey needs a third bridge to the mainland: the same resident’s claim that, if you’re not off by 9.30, you’re stuck on the island for the day don’t sound massively plausible, if I’m honest. But it’s not entirely unfair to suggest that, if you’re going to build more homes, you should probably build more infrastructure, too.
On the other hand, though, not long afterwards the council also knocked back plans for 44 affordable homes on an isolated patch of green belt in the middle of a town on the mainland, so after a while you sort of start to suspect people just don’t want to build homes. And so scared of local opposition did the Tory administration become that, shortly before the 2022 election, it binned the local development plan, even as it warned that not having one could mean speculative development and national government taking control of its planning functions.
Did that save them? Oh good lord, no. In that May’s elections the Tories lost control of the council. This year, they cleverly screwed up the paperwork so that a bunch of candidates didn’t make the ballot at all, but it didn’t matter because not a single one of its candidates was elected anyway. Neither were Labour nor the Greens. The Lib Dems didn’t even bother to stand.
In fact, Castle Point is now the first council in English history without a single councillor from any national party. It’s now run by a coalition of the People’s Independent Party, which exists entirely to oppose housebuilding, and the Canvey Island Independent Party, which exists for other reasons but doesn’t like housebuilding either.
The administration now claims to be working on a new, resident-led local plan – although whether residents will actually be any more enthusiastic about housebuilding just because the people proposing it aren’t members of a Westminster party remains to be seen. The decision by the two independent groups to collaborate means there is not a single opposition councillor.
So this is an inspirational story of how people can put aside their differences and work together, just so long as they don’t want to build any houses. Incidentally, the party ranked fourth by vote share was the Canvey Residents Alliance. They don’t have a web presence, so we can’t be sure of their views on housebuilding, but-
But I think we can take a wild guess. Quite.
Jonn Elledge’s new book, A History of the World in 47 Borders: The Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps, is out now.
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