Street Votes

Empowering communities for more and better housing

Based on the “Supurbia” proposals of the Greater London Authority and HTA Design

A reason to say “yes”

Local owners, tenants and the wider community will all benefit from saying yes, meaning everyone has a reason to allow new homes in their area.

Endorsements

Architects, builders and planners

Architects, planners and builders have endorsed trying street votes as a way to provide better, more affordable homes and better places.

Full endorsement list

Toby Lloyd, Chair of the No Place Left Behind Commission, former Head of Policy at Shelter
Suburban intensification is one of the most effective ways of making our cities healthier, happier and more sustainable. But the complexity of dealing with multiple property owners makes it nigh on impossible: a mechanism that could do this efficiently, ensure development is of the highest quality, and win the support of existing communities, is a holy grail of housing policy. These proposals might just have cracked it.

Green Alliance
Street votes would provide a mechanism for suburban intensification that is missing from the current planning system.
Fragmented land ownership in existing urban areas prevents larger parcels of land from becoming available for redevelopment. Instead, small plots may be developed one at a time, if they can overcome opposition from other residents on the street. Agreeing plans at a street level allows larger plots to be freed up and enables a more coherent, efficient use of space. It also involves all residents which ensures designs that are popular.
Increasing the number and floorspace of dwellings in suburban areas will reduce pressures on the natural environment by sparing greenfield land that would otherwise be built on.
It will also enable public transport improvements in two ways. Higher density is a necessary condition for efficient and frequent public transport systems because it allows more people to live within walking distance of a transport link. Second, taxation of the value created by new dwellings, and of new residents through council tax, would help to fund local public transport services.
Green Alliance supports a trial of street votes as a first step towards enabling suburban intensification.

Roger Geffen, Policy Director, Cycling UK
If we are to overcome our over-reliance on motor vehicles – with all the economic, environmental and other costs that this imposes on our society – then we need to find ways of building new homes in places where their residents can easily get around by clean and healthy travel, including by bike. It remains to be seen whether holding Street Votes will work as a way to obtain local community support for building new homes in existing built-up areas. However the idea has to be worth piloting, given the problems it could solve if successful.

Jamie Ratcliff, Executive Director of People and Partnerships at Network Homes
This street votes plan would allow residents, including social tenants, to take charge of regenerating streets, building new homes, and reaping the rewards of development themselves. This is a very useful addition to the package of reforms to planning, compulsory purchase, public land sales, and affordable homes funding necessary to tackle the housing shortage.

Kane Emerson, Labour YIMBY
Street votes present an important supplementary way to build more homes quickly where they are most needed through working with communities. By insisting on effective value capture, a Labour Government can ensure street votes fund new council homes, local services and infrastructure.

Stian Westlake, author of Capital Without Capitalism (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
One of the biggest barriers to growth in the modern world is our failure to build enough houses in places where people want to live and work. But most proposals to fix it end up failing, because they ignore the thorny politics of the issue. This proposal is different – by providing an incentive for homeowners to support new building, it offers a credible solution to one of the biggest economic problems the UK faces.

This paper takes it entirely the other way, giving street by street, village by village, parish by parish the power toay yes or no. That must surely be a positive step to protecting the land, especially countryside, and giving communities the ability to decide what is right for them.

Russell Curtis, Director of RCKa architects, Mayor’s Design Advocate (in response to the Strong Suburbs report)
The suburbs of Britain’s towns and cities have immense potential to deliver much-needed homes in a sustainable and attractive way, yet too often they have fallen behind in their duty to help in providing homes for all who need them. Presented with the tools that this document proposes, communities will be able to make a meaningful contribution to housing delivery whilst also giving them greater agency in the decision-making process – as well as an opportunity to shape their neighbourhoods to suit their collective needs. It deserves serious consideration.

Geeta Nanda, Chair of the G15, CEO of Metropolitan Thames Valley
Building homes that local people want and can benefit from directly is a win-win for everyone. These proposals have potential to secure support for much-needed considerate development within communities. Crucially, existing residents, including those living in social housing, stand to gain from having a stronger voice in the future of their communities.

Nick Hutchings, A2Dominion (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
The UK needs more homes. One crucial and often overlooked way of getting them is suburban intensification. This carefully thought out and detailed proposal provides one way we might enable more suburban intensification, with community support.

Christopher Boyle KC, Landmark Chambers (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
This is an excellent proposal, which could make an immense contribution to resolving the housing shortage. When land values rose during the Georgian era, they built up, bequeathing us many of our most prized streets. This powerful and sophisticated proposal offers a way of doing this again, letting us create beautiful streets that we treasure for centuries.

Sam Dumitriu, Head of Policy, Britain Remade
Britain has too few homes and new homes are too often built in the wrong places far from jobs with limited access to public transport. This is bad for the economy and bad for the environment too. Street Votes can help change this. They create a new incentive to get communities to say ‘Yes in my Backyard’ to suburban densification.o few homes and new homes are too often built in the wrong places far from jobs with limited access to public transport. This is bad for the economy and bad for the environment too. Street Votes can help change this. They create a new incentive to get communities to say ‘Yes in my Backyard’ to suburban densification.

Chris Worrall, Housing Columnist for Left Foot Forward; Former Editor of Red Brick Blog; Fabian Society Local Government and Housing Member Policy Group Lead
From a Fabian perspective an incremental change such as this is good and to be welcomed for the additional supply it would bring. Of course, it’s only effective as a supplement to the current system. While I think further step change is desperately needed, it could illustrate one way to move over time to clearer, more predictable rules everywhere.

Jon Tabbush, Senior Researcher, Centre for London
Street votes would turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs by giving householders a say over the design of new, denser development

Neil Cameron KC, Landmark Chambers (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
By devolving planning powers to the street level, the proposals have the potential to resolve the tension between residents’ desire to protect their immediate environment and landowners’ desire to realise development opportunities, to the benefit of all.

Francis Terry, Francis Terry and Associates (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
This fascinating proposal provides an updated and democratised version of the traditional building regulations that created so many of our best streets. It constitutes an important opportunity to create the beautiful homes that the country needs, and to do so with the support of existing residents.

Tony Burton CBE, community campaigner
Experience shows that quality planning decisions depend on quality community engagement and people having a direct say in the future of their streets and open spaces.  This has been at the heart of the success of neighbourhood planning over the last decade and this report is a timely reminder of the potential to extend community rights even further.  A planning system with local communities driving decisions can do much more to improve the quality of new building in our towns and cities and protect the countryside and green spaces.

Fields in Trust
Fields in Trust welcomes the principle of involving communities in shaping development in their local areas and protecting and improving neighbourhood access to green space. We look forward to seeing further details of these proposals.

Sir Robin Wales, Former Labour Mayor of Newham (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
These fascinating proposals will not solve the housing shortage alone, but they could make a major contribution to doing so, creating many high-quality homes and neighbourhoods, and helping to make house prices and rents more affordable.

Ben Derbyshire, HTA Design, President London Forum of Civic and Amenity Societies, Former President RIBA
I welcome the Strong Suburbs report by Policy Exchange and urge policy makers to take note of its detailed proposals to address long-standing obstacles to the well-being of our suburbs, contributing at the same time to the solution of wider urban issues… Once in place, a policy framework such as this will be a terrific stimulus for popular housing development and local economic activity.

Sally Copley, Executive Director of External Affairs, Sustrans
65% of people agree that they should be able to meet most of their everyday needs within a 20-minute return walk. Building more new homes in existing settlements would give more people the chance to live within walking, wheeling and cycling distance of town centres and public transport hubs, whilst contributing to net zero. With the right safeguards in place, street votes could help do this, by giving communities the chance to shape how it happens.

Amelia Stewart, Demos
Great news that the government is going to trial Street Votes. The housing crisis is one of the central reasons why the UK is poorer than Germany and France. Community-endorsed, gentle and beautiful densification might be part of the solution.

Dean Hochlaf, research analyst at the Centre for Progressive Policy
‘Street votes’ are not a solution to the housing crisis, but they are an interesting idea that deserves to be explored further. If successful, and implemented with appropriate safeguards to ensure that they work fairly, they might help to make housing more affordable and increase the quality of housing available for everyone. Their inclusion in the government’s latest Planning Bill is therefore an interesting development and worth following as more detail on the plans emerge.

Dan Wilson Craw, Generation Rent
A compelling answer to the question of how you build more homes in London while keeping green belt fans and skyscraper opponents happy

Shreya Nanda, Economist at IPPR Centre for Economic Justice
Progressives should look at these proposals with interest. They have the potential to make a difference for the millions of people currently struggling under the high cost of housing; and to build a broad political coalition in order to do so.

Neil Homer
My firm ONeil Homer has successfully helped almost 200 communities create effective neighbourhood plans, giving them more control over their areas while helping to deliver housing with local support. I would welcome trials of street votes as another tool in the box for communities to use to help manage change.

Clare Foges, Times columnist
Why can’t we densify in a more appealing way, turning nimbys into yimbys? The think tank Policy Exchange recently set out the excellent idea of “street votes”: neighbourhood referendums to add another storey on to a street, or to build in gaps between houses, with local people getting a share of the profit.

Chris Todd, Director, Transport Action Network
Spatial planning and urban densification are essential for delivering better services, healthier neighbourhoods and for tackling climate change. Street votes is an important step towards enabling this to happen.

Rico Wojtulewicz, Head of Housing and Planning at the National Federation of Builders
‘Street Votes’ will prove a valuable tool to densify communities and give residents a say over how that is achieved on their street. It will also stimulate work pipelines for small builders and innovation opportunities for offsite solutions. These factors make it an attractive proposal, but it has another underdiscussed benefit and that is the opportunity to make existing homes more energy efficient.

Tony Travers, Professor in the School of Public Policy at LSE
Suburban intensification has great promise as a way of creating many new homes at the same time as helping to revive town centres in the sometimes under-valued outer areas of our cities. This report outlines a fascinating potential way of realising this opportunity by giving power to local neighbourhoods.

With more than 17 million UK homes having an EPC rating of C or below, ‘Street Votes’ would ensure that new buildings and extensions were built to modern standards, and grant greater access to the existing fabric of structures, which will enable the most invasive and energy efficient retrofitting works to be completed more cheaply and easily.

Peter Murray, Curator-in-Chief of New London Architecture, Mayor’s Design Advocate, Chairman of the London Society
Suburban intensification is a crucial means of creating new homes in the places they are most needed, at the same time as making our cities more liveable and more sustainable.  This fascinating report outlines a way this could happen under the leadership of local communities.

Nicholas Boys Smith, Create Streets
Where we live has a measurable effect on our physical and mental health: on how much we walk, on how many neighbours we know or on how tense we feel on the quotidian journey to work or school. Design affects us from the air we breathe to our ultimate sense of purpose and wellbeing. And an insufficient supply of homes is having a catastrophic effect on generational prosperity and opportunity. Strong Suburbs is a seminal report and a very important part of the movement to increase not just the supply of new homes by changing the nature of planning regulation but also to re-imagine how we think about the humanity, popularity and beauty of the streets and squares in which we live.

Chris Smowton, Liberal Democrat local councillor
I welcome the ‘street votes’ approach, which should encourage development that provides more homes within cities, thereby contributing to housebuilding targets without urban sprawl, while ensuring that tenants and the local authority see a share of the benefits. I particularly welcome the micro-democratic mechanism that localises accountability and removes the need for a Local Authority to construct a top-down, one-size-fits-all policy.

David Milner, Deputy Director, Create Streets
Street votes speak to everything I came into urban design to do. Gentle urban intensification, which street votes will enable, is potentially the most important thing we can do to tackle the climate emergency.

Philip Salter, The Entrepreneurs Network (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
Fast-growing firms play a crucial role in the British economy, creating innovative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. In recent decades, however, the UK’s planning system has largely locked them out of the housing industry. By devolving planning powers to communities, this outstanding scheme may give entrepreneurs a chance to deliver the housing we need in the places it’s most needed.

Sir Simon Jenkins, Guardian columnist, author, BBC broadcaster
In recent years, the British public has been told that the only solution to a shortage of homes is building sprawling housing estates in the countryside and high-rise apartment blocks in cities. These proposals show that this is not so. We can build the homes we need through making a more sparing use of land that is already urbanised, and we can achieve this through empowering local communities rather than ignoring their concerns and objections.

Shaun Spiers, Executive Director of Green Alliance
Higher densities in existing residential streets will help enable sustainable transport systems, support local services and reduce pressure on the natural environment. Green Alliance supports a trial of street votes as a mechanism for updating our urban fabric for a net zero world.

Sam Hall, Director of the Conservative Environment Network
I warmly welcome this ‘street votes’ proposal. It provides a popular route to increasing housing supply through gentle increases to density. Denser housing has a number of environmental benefits, such as preserving green space, enabling more active travel, and reducing emissions from cars. I hope the government looks very closely at this idea as it puts together its planning reforms.

Nicky Gavron, former Deputy Mayor of London, former Member of the London Assembly and Chair of the Housing and Planning Committee
I welcome this creative report because I believe that the street scale offers unique opportunities for neighbours to participate in planning changes to their immediate local area. It would work particularly well for detached or semi detached properties, which could be replaced with a small apartment block. I can foresee that it could provide an incentive for people who want to downsize from a house they own or rent, but only if they can stay in an area where they have a sense of belonging. This, in turn, could free up a formerly under occupied property in the same street for a family or shared house.

Ben Glover, Acting Head of Research, Demos
Remember @johnrmyers explaining this idea to me a few years ago. Liked it, but wasn’t sure it would ever happen. So well done to him and the others involved!

John Fingleton, Fingleton Associates
Excellent report … Really impressive how you have covered the economics, law, aesthetics, and culture in a single coherent document. Really important that the coherence is maintained if Government takes it forward.  Well done.

Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands
It goes to the heart of what we’re saying. We have got to, in our cities, move to denser areas. It can be done well. And one of the interesting things about the pandemic: everyone said everyone will want to move out of cities, but actually we’re seeing people being very comfortable living near city centres because they get the sustainability notion.

Stephen Bush
…for all I am dubious it will work it’s still the closest to a big leap forward we’re gonna get

Reuben Young, Research and Policy Manager, Network Homes
This is a rare example of a policy proposal with no losers. Densifying suburbs with community consent will be an important step in meeting England’s immense housing need.

Royal Town Planning Institute, Reponse to the Planning White Paper, 2020
Trials of voluntary street or neighbourhood-level agreements to allow gentle densification through permitted development should be explored, enabled by digital technology.

Dr Edward Shepherd, Associate Professor of Planning and Development at the University of Reading
I welcome Ben’s work on street votes.

Mark Pennington, Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy, King’s College London (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
Top down housing reform has been tried, tried again, and found wanting. If we are to make a robust change to the UK’s housing market and planning regime we need to take on the insights of political economy. Street votes, by drawing on the insights of Ostrom and Olson, may just be that.

Chris Bowden, Director at neighbourhood planning consultancy Navigus Planning
The new process may relieve pressures on overstretched planning departments

Tom Harwood, journalist and television presenter
The street votes proposal offers huge hope to young people by providing badly-needed homes.

Matthew Lloyd, of Matthew Lloyd Architects LLP
This excellent report shows how we can win the support of more existing communities for new homes in their neighbourhoods by giving them control over the form of development and a share in its benefits.  It offers a way of building much-needed homes, while simultaneously making our suburbs into better, more sustainable and more liveable places.

Marc Harris, Labour YIMBY (in response to Fast Wins on Planning)
This excellent report shows how we can win the support of more existing communities for new homes in their neighbourhoods by giving them control over the form of development and a share in its benefits.  It offers a way of building much-needed homes, while simultaneously making our suburbs into better, more sustainable and more liveable places.

Peter Franklin, journalist and policy adviser
If the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then these proposals represent a return to sanity. Housing and planning policy desperately needs fresh thinking – and this is the genuine article.

We can only restore faith in the new development by prioritising beauty and empowering communities. Street Votes would put these principles into action.

Liam Halligan, Economist, journalist, broadcaster and author of Home Truths
Street votes could help to diversify the supply of sites for housing, helping small builders to grow and breaking the hold of the big developers.

This paper could provide a new start for our planning system that allows communities to take control over their lives and define the direction of their areas. Ultimately, this is how we will solve our current housing crisis and bring communities together for the betterment of all.

Sam Raby, Liberal Democrat District Councillor
I absolutely support this. We need more and better housing and power should be devolved as far as possible. This should be embraced by the Liberal Democrats

Tom Wilson, PricedOut, writing in LabourList
Too often housing is seen as being imposed on a community, rather than planned with them… a new system, designed to bring in the local community to help determine what sort of building is needed in an area as well as, crucially, share in the economic benefits from doing so would help encourage building and improve the tone of the housing debate. Policies like Street Votes represent the first real attempt to reckon with this issue, ideas which should be taken forward by Labour.

Guilherme Rodrigues & Anthony Breach, Measuring Up, Centre for Cities 2021
[…] as well as the street votes proposal championed by the Yimby Alliance and Policy Exchange, would improve this greatly, and should be included in the forthcoming Planning Bill.

Rev. Canon Peter Newby, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster
Responding to the right for decent housing, as necessary for human flourishing, is the mark of every civilised society. These proposals offer a solution to the housing crisis that recognises both the geographical limitations of this country and the positive benefits of urban life based on historical precedent. These proposals can overcome the clash between the need for affordable housing and the disagreements as to where such housing should be located.

Ike Ijeh, Architecture Editor of Building
This is a brilliant report, which I wholeheartedly support.  I believe these proposals could revolutionise the way we build homes in this country, strengthening high streets, enhancing neighbourhoods and celebrating local character. Moreover, though the proposals represent the most radical and innovative rethinking of our planning system for generations, they are embedded in sound cultural and historic precedents that embody some of Britain’s most successful urban traditions. I hope to see them included in the upcoming Planning Bill.

George Holt, Dartford Borough Councillor for Wilmington, Sutton-at-Hone and Hawley
The proposal is both revolutionary and ordinary. Giving a new lease of life to communities which need it, whilst taking a common sense approach by empowering residents.

Bright Blue, Greater and Greener Homes Report
If successfully implemented, street votes could be an effective tool for encouraging more dense, sustainable development in England.

Sir Oliver Letwin PC
Street plans constitute a potentially useful extension of neighbourhood planning, which might significantly boost the quality, quantity and popularity of new housing.

The Lord Haskel
Many economists believe that restricting housing supply is a drag on our economy and puts us at a significant disadvantage. Affordable housing is essential for social mobility, and the so-called street plans could potentially deliver thousands of homes near public transport in high housing cost areas, with economic gain shared among all the community.

Tom Chance, Chief Executive, Community Land Trust Network
Community Land Trusts have demonstrated their enormous potential to provide affordable, high-quality homes and neighbourhoods. I would welcome street votes as a democratic means for Community Land Trusts to be able to bring forward their plans with more ease and certainty.

Owen Edwards, Better Planning Coalition
The Better Planning Coalition of 32 organisations supports local democracy in the planning system. We believe that people should have a real say on what happens in their area. We should encourage and champion democratic participation in planning.

Karl Sharro, Partner at PLP Architecture (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
We are excited about these proposals and see the potential for a practical and inclusive plan for urban development. We can create more liveable and sustainable cities through suburban intensification, while providing badly needed homes. This important report illustrates a path to how this could be achieved by engaging local residents

John Penrose MP
These proposals create a valuable extra ‘fast lane’ on the road to turning our towns and cities back into beautiful, green, human-scale places to live, work and visit. They mean neighbours don’t have to wait for their local Council to introduce the Government’s powerful and welcome new proposals for Building Up Not Out through permitted development rights that use locally-approved ‘pattern book’ design codes. If their local Council is dragging its feet, they can organise a local response for their street instead. It gives local residents more control over how their neighbourhoods look, feel and function, and will mean a huge jolt of energy and adrenaline to the speed and scale of the transformation that we all know is needed.

Joshan Parmar, Chair of Cambridge University Liberal Association
Street votes are a progressive policy that will bring people together to solve the housing crisis. They will change the anti-development culture once and for all by giving local residents a say in local development and an incentive to build more homes.

Dr Kristian Niemietz, Head of Political Economy, Institute of Economic Affairs
Jean-Claude Juncker once famously quipped: “We all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.” He was not talking about British housing policy, but he might just as well have been. Politicians of all stripes know that we need to build a lot more housing, which is why they talk about it at every opportunity. But they also know that following up on their words with deeds would be electoral suicide, given the fierce resistance that housebuilding usually provokes. The paper “Strong Suburbs” by Samuel Hughes and Ben Southwood offers exactly the kind of innovative policy thinking that could lead us out of this dilemma, by turning housing development into a win-win situation. It is an intriguing mix of radicalism and pragmatism, which has the potential to reconcile the economically necessary with the politically feasible.

Fr Andrew Pinsent, University of Oxford, MA DPhil PhB STB PhL PhD FRSA
I am delighted to see one of the key recommendations of Roger Scruton’s Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission developed with such care and detail. I praise, in particular, the way in which this document proposes we should create badly needed homes in ways that conserve what is good and empower those who are local.

Trina Lynksey,  2019/20 London Green Spaces Commissioner and Chair of Deptford Park & Folkestone Gardens User Group
People need to see the benefit of development to welcome the new homes #London so desperately needs.

Jonathan Seager, Executive Director of Place at London First
If London is to have any chance of building the homes it needs then suburban densification must be one of the many steps that are taken to increase housing supply. This report is a welcome contribution to the debate about how our suburbs can maintain their character while also providing more homes.

Ant Breach
Street Votes are one of the best new ideas I’ve seen on how we can fix the planning system. Boosting the redevelopment of existing suburban homes is a crucial to ending the housing crisis, and this is a solid gameplan on how to do it.

Philip Barnes, Group Land and Planning Director, Barratt plc
Street votes could be a useful way to create more small sites, although it will also be vital to bring forward more large sites under the current system.

Neil Garratt AM, London Assembly
The point is not to force development upon people, but to give people control if they wish to have it. It isn’t a silver bullet, but I think it could be a useful new part of our toolbox to fix a broken planning system. Even a small minority of streets choosing to take up the option would make a substantial contribution to providing the homes the country needs and meeting the aspirations of young people to homeownership. Most importantly, it would meet that need with the consent of those affected.

Dr Billy Christmas, King’s College London
The British planning system gives neighbours enourmous de facto rights, and incentives, to block one another from developing, resulting in a systematic undersupply of housing where it is most needed. The social and economic consequences of this are profound and far reaching. Reform of this status quo is both practically and morally complex. Street Votes are the most politically feasible and morally plausible proposal I that I’ve ever come across.

Ryan Shorthouse, Director, Bright Blue
Street votes would be a sensible step to improve housing supply and enhance the environment. By building gentle density in areas that are already developed we can reduce carbon emissions, protect green space and provide more homes in the areas that need it most.

Yolande Barnes, Professor and Chair at the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London
Suburban intensification means creating popular and vibrant neighbourhoods in formerly low-density suburban housing estates. It makes places much more liveable and sustainable for everyone while also providing more much-needed new homes. This report outlines a way in which it could happen more often, under the leadership of local communities. These are important proposals, and they deserve close consideration.

Prof. Robert Adam, Robert Adam Architectural Consultancy (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
It is important that people have proper control over their immediate surroundings: it is they who should define beauty, for it is they that will live with it. This kind of control can unlock the negativity to local development arising from a feeling of a lack of control and support the established historic process of intensification to the benefit of those who live there. By putting the future of streets in the hands of the inhabitants, this proposal could unlock the construction of many new homes.

Robert Colvile, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies
The housing crisis is a problem with huge social and economic costs. As we have long argued, one reason local communities often oppose development is that it can feel like something done to them rather than with them or for them. Street votes offer communities a way round this impasse, letting them create opportunities for development where they stand to benefit from it. It has long been championed by the CPS’s current and former Heads of Housing, and I am delighted to see the Government taking it forward.

Alex Morton, Centre for Policy Studies
This idea creates a win-win-win situation across high demand areas. Allowing less attractive, low density streets in places like London, Oxford and Cambridge to voluntarily convert into high quality beautiful terraced homes benefits existing residents, reduces housing pressure overall, and will make these areas more desirable and more affordable.

Tyler Cowen, Professor of Economics at George Mason University
Spatial questions – town planning, zoning, housebuilding and so on – are some of the most difficult questions that politics deals with. Any decisions governments make about where homes and infrastructure should be built, or where people should live, involve difficult tradeoffs and a dizzying array of spillovers and externalities. This paper is rare in that it addresses that challenge head on, and comes up with a solution for building hundreds of thousands of new homes that just might work.

Freddie Hoareau, Lib Dem Councillor in Lewes and Eastbourne
We desperately need more homes, especially in existing urban areas. Street votes would allow residents to say yes to more housing, ensuring broad local support for homes whilst enhancing our liberal commitment to listening to communities.

Rachel Wolf, Founding Partner at Public First
Planning is an enormous problem, and solving the politics of fixing planning is incredibly difficult. But building more homes with the support of local communities could help on many fronts. Street votes are worth trying to see if they can help to achieve that.

Rory Meakin
Letting streets and blocks vote to allow themselves permission to develop provides home-owners with a way of improving their immediate neighbourhoods, where the proposals are popular. Just as importantly, allowing development where it’s popular without requiring it to happen everywhere can unlock much-needed housing supply that will help meet the housing shortage and ease the crisis. The consequences of that won’t just be bigger homes for people living in cramped conditions, it’ll also mean more people able to afford to move to where good jobs are available, driving up productivity and incomes.

Rosie Pearson, Community Planning Alliance
The Community Planning Alliance has over 500 local campaign groups mapped.  We seek to give communities across the UK a greater say in the planning system. There needs to be a dramatic shift from planning which is done to residents by councils and developers to community participation whereby residents shape the future of the area.   We therefore welcome any resident-led approach like this that puts communities in the driving seat.

Richard Blyth, Head of Policy, Royal Town Planning Institute (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
The proposed Renewal areas present the biggest challenge in the Government’s reform agenda. The areas covered are so extensive and diverse. One solution in some areas could be some kind of community creation of codes for gentle densification, such as seen in this report.

Peter Eversden MBE, Chairman, London Forum of Amenity and Civic Societies (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
The ‘street votes’ approach advocated in this report offers a community-led route to suburban densification that could overcome much of the opposition sparked by developer-led initiatives. I welcome the report, and would be very interested to see trials of these ideas at sufficient scale to test them thoroughly.

Dr Riëtte Oosthuizen, HTA (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
HTA has long argued that suburban intensification offers huge opportunities to improve our cities and create badly needed new homes. This report from Policy Exchange offers a powerful way to achieve this through empowering local communities to agree to the forms of intensification that they want.

Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
Neighbourhood Planning has proven that local communities can engage positively in shaping their community and permitting growth. This paper takes that a step further – recognising that 20th century suburbia has been frozen in time, because there is no way the people who live there can choose or benefit from the evolution of suburban streets. Street level democratisation of development is a profoundly important idea that could have a key role to play in addressing both the housing shortage and creating more sustainable and attractive communities. The Government should give careful consideration to these important proposals.

Andrew Boff, London Assembly, Chair of the Planning and Regeneration Committee (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
The ‘street votes’ approach will ensure that they are intimately involved in, and benefit from the changes in their immediate environment and also help deliver the homes that Londoners so desperately need.

Baroness Thornhill MBE, Former Liberal Democrat Mayor of Watford (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
I am genuinely excited by a radically new approach to get residents to go from being BANANAS (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody!) to YIMBYs! I am still scarred by experiences from trying to ‘place shape’ and provide much needed homes in Watford. It’s tough on everyone involved in the chain. It’s so important that we change this anti development culture. This proposal is brave, it’s challenging, it’s definitely ‘outside the box’ – but let’s give it a go.

John Myers, YIMBY Alliance (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
This is a tour de force. Finally, an English planning reform that is practical and politically feasible, but nonetheless has the potential over time to add many more beautiful homes where most needed. Seventy years of planning reform failure demonstrates that we need innovative thinking that also learns from the past. Southwood and Hughes have done just that.

Anya Martin, Director of PricedOut (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
The White Paper is the greatest opportunity in living memory to build the homes we need, and these imaginative, fully worked, detailed proposals for street votes will help it deliver on its aims.

Andrew Beharrell, Pollard Thomas Edwards – author of Semi-Permissive‘ (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
This imaginative and well argued proposal is an important addition to the growing body of opinion in favour of encouraging suburban residents to transform their neighbourhoods through incremental change. The suburbs need smart new ideas to help them to modernise and urbanise, while retaining or restoring the qualities of greenery and domesticity which made them attractive in the first place. The inevitable shift in travel patterns and car ownership offer a great opportunity to make this happen.

Matthew Rosson, Landhold (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
The well considered proposals appear an excellent opportunity for multiple stakeholders to deliver high quality development in substantial numbers to aid the national housing crisis. In our experience bringing the local community together to form a coherent plan with the agents of delivery can stymie development. The Strong Suburbs proposals could overcome this challenge and unlock the country’s enormous potential.

Ben Bolgar, Prince’s Foundation (In response to the Strong Suburbs report)
Community-led suburban intensification can make a valuable contribution to creating more homes and better neighbourhoods. This important report outlines a way of making this happen, and it deserves careful attention.

Further endorsements for Create Mews

Nicholas Rogers AM, London Assembly
London needs more homes. Everyone agrees on this. But the sorts of homes we are offered are often not up to scratch: inappropriate and unimaginative tower blocks in suburban areas or further encroachment on scarce green belt. These street votes proposals offer a third way: by giving locals the power to build Georgian-style terraces and mews developments they would allow us to preserve our precious green space and skyline while enabling young Londoners to achieve their dreams of owning their own home.

Rose Grayston
Shouldn’t we give under-used alleys in our cities a new lease of life by converting them into additional housing, as @createstreets new report today argues? Definitely!

Some will worry about parking provision, but where public transport is strong this should be surmountable.

Harriet Wennberg, Executive Director of INTBAU
Suburban intensification can create neighbourhoods that are more sustainable and more liveable. Many of the world’s most beautiful cities developed this way, like Valencia, Florence and Istanbul. These excellent proposals show how we could revive this process under the leadership of local communities.

Philip Box, Public Affairs and Policy Officer, the UK Green Building Council
It is very welcome to see sustainability placed at the heart of these proposals for the UK’s towns and cities. It is particularly positive to see strong emphasis on addressing whole life carbon, which will help deliver emission reductions across both the construction and the operation of any associated development. As we have seen across UKGBC’s work, community-led regeneration and innovative local- decision making offer a valuable means to deliver social value, high- quality homes and net zero together, as we move to tackle both the climate emergency and build places people want to live in.

Paul Thornton, Vice Chair of the London Forum of Amenity and Civic Societies
Hughes and Southwood’s ‘block plans’ proposals for urban densification mirror their ‘street votes’ approach for the suburbs. Could this be the shot in the arm that Neighbourhood Planning in densely populated areas so badly needs? Some serious pilots are needed to gauge householder enthusiasm for the approach, and its scalability.

Prof. Tony Travers, London School of Economics
As the Outer London Commission showed, there is immense potential to make better use of waste or derelict land near to public transport. This is a thoughtful proposal on how to do that with community support.

Brian Berry, Chief Executive of the Federation of Master Builders
Small, local builders are severely impacted by a lack of available and viable land which hinders the delivery of vitally needed new housing. The approach proposed in this report could go some way to create new development opportunities which deliver these much-needed new homes. The ability to develop underutilised, small sites would enable new housing projects specifically aimed at SME house builders. SME builders are best placed to produce sympathetic, good quality homes in sites that have been led by the community as set out in this report. What we would need to ensure is that any policy that creates new sites does not add additional planning or cost burdens onto small builders, who already face a difficult path through the planning process.

Matt Bowker, Managing Director, CODA Studios
A lovely idea from CREATE STREETS to transform 1000’s of disused parking alleyways into attractive ‘mews style’ new homes
This is another way we can address rising housing need through the gradual intensification of brownfield land in our towns and cities.

Christopher Katkowski KC, Kings Chambers
I have read Create Mews and I have to say – it’s another brilliant piece of work. My experience over the years with development proposals on tight urban and suburban brownfield largely hidden sites is that they can be just as controversial as housing estates on green fields in the countryside, and yet they really shouldn’t be. The beauty of this concept is that it springs from neighbours working together rather than from mutual suspicion and hostility.

International support for street votes

New Zealand

“ACT’s alternative to the RMA will result in more houses being built and fewer barriers being put in the way of their construction, in a way that returns power to local communities. The policy would introduce ‘street votes’ where a street or community could vote to upzone”
Brooke van Velden, ACT Deputy Leader and Housing spokesperson, New Zealand

Ontario, Canada

The Ontario Liberals proposed Street Votes as part of their 2022 platform: “We’ll also allow interested municipalities to permit Street Voting – which lets single streets of residents, both renters and owners, vote to increase minimum housing allowances.”

Hawaii, USA

State Senator Stanley Chang sponsored SB 2484 which would allow block-by-block votes to allow more housing in interested counties.

Ireland

In Ireland, as in the UK there is a serious housing crisis. During my 15 years as a councillor on Dublin City Council I supported building more homes in our city. The street votes proposal is a fascinating idea showing how we could build support from local residents for high quality housing development in their communities. Too often the voices of people who are open to new homes go unheard.
Andrew Montague, former Lord Mayor of Dublin

The Entrepreneurs Network

Signatories of The Entrepreneurs Network’s letter calling for the Government to Implement their Strong Foundations report, which calls for street votes and other reforms to address the country’s housing problems: 

Paul C Cheshire – Professor of Economic Geography, London School of Economics

Matt Clifford – Co-Founder & CEO, Entrepreneur First

Simon Woodroffe – Founder of YO! Sushi and YOTEL YO! Company

Russ Shaw CBE – Founder, Tech London Advocates & Global Tech Advocates

Dr Dylan Jones-Evans OBE – Director, Enlli Associates

Rajeeb Dey – MBE Founder & CEO Learnerbly

Sean Ramsden MBE – Founder & CEO, Ramsden International

Richard Mabey – CEO, Juro

Alison Cork – CEO, Alison at Home

Andrew Dixon – Director, ARC InterCapital Ltd

Jessica Mendoza – CEO, Monadd

Dr Cristiana Banila – Founder & CSO, Mitra Bio

John Hassard – Director, EnviroMission Ltd

Cordelia Meacher – Managing Director, FieldHouse Associates

Lorraine Thomas – Founder, View From My Window

Anne-Laure Le Cunff – Founder, Ness Labs Ltd

Alex Hanson-Smith – Co-Founder & CTPO, inploi

Giovanna Forte – CEO Forte Medical Limited

Maria Tanjala – CEO FilmChain

Marc Figueras – Director, KeyNest

Simon Labahn – Co-Founder & CEO, Spotlight

Peter Francis – Co-Founder, FluidStack

Rose Tan – Founder, PlayThru

Lorna Armitage – Co-Founder & COO, CAPSLOCK

Erika Brodnock – CEO, Optimum Health

Maiko Schaffrath – Founder, Impact Hustlers

Sebastien Krier – Director, Dataphysix Ltd

Henry Whorwood – Head of Research & Consultancy, Beauhurst

Tommy Long – Co-Founder, JDLT

Sahil Sethi – CEO, Maji

Aileen McDonnell – CEO, B4Box

Alison Surtees – Co-Founder, Future’s Venture

James Frewin – Founder, OCTOBER®

Eleanor Sharman – Founder, Swan

Emma Jones – Founder, Enterprise Nation

Jevan Nagarajah – Founder & CEO, Better Dairy

Camin McCluskey – Co-Founder & CTO. Telescope Analytics

Favour Mandanji Nyikosa – Co-Founder & CTO, Augmize

Serdar Paktin – Founder, pakt

Dr Filip Auksztol – CEO, Quantum Boost Ltd

Stuart Johnson – Founder & CTO, Simple Construction Software

Ashvin Prabaker – Founder, Stealth Startup

David Murray-Hundley – Co-Founder & CEO, Pario Ventures

Ian Merricks – Managing Partner, White Horse Capital

Sam Gordon – Founder, Gordon & Eden

Ross Williams – CEO, Venntro Media Group

Guy Tolhurst – Group CEO, Indagate Group

Karina Robinson – CEO, Robinson Hambro Ltd

Stuart Lucas – Executive Chairman, Asset Match Limited

Jack Bartlett – Co-Founder, acceler8

Sharief Abdel-Hadi – Co-Founder & CEO, Apricot

Mark Brownridge – Board Member, EISA

Charis Sfyrakis – CEO, Algomo

Lance Forman – Owner, Forman & Field

Michael Nabarro – Co-Founder & CEO, Spektrix Ltd

Sandip Gangakhedkar – Co-Founder & CTO, Imperium Drive

Alastair Paterson CEO – Digital Shadows

Apurva Chitnis – CEO Sidetrack

Meri Beckwith – Co-founder, Lindus Health

Dana Denis-Smith – CEO, Obelisk Support

Matteo Console Camprini – CEO, MCCGLC ltd

Gregory Fittock – Owner, Players Social

Avril Barker – Director, Cognosco Noor Ltd

Mohamed Habib – CTO, digger

DevJose Puga – Co-Founder & CEO, Imaginario Ltd