In January 2018, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) was renamed the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in order to reflect the government’s ‘renewed focus’ on house building. Symbolism can be important and one of the arguments in this book is that if ministers really want to get houses built, they have the power to make it happen. It is good that they are signalling that they want to do so. However, I also argue that obsessing about numbers alone is a bad mistake. The country will not get the new houses it needs by privileging numbers over everything else.

Another argument in the book is that the countryside matters. As well as a housing crisis, we have a host of related rural and environmental woes: loss and erosion of landscapes; more species declining than thriving; the suburbanisation of villages and market towns; unequal and acrimonious battles over planning; and climate change. We need to think hard about the location of new homes, and build them in ways that foster nature and help address climate change.

I see no sign that the government is geared to tackle house building with the sharp focus of the post-war governments, let alone address housing in the round. The Prime Minister says she is taking “personal charge” of the government’s strategy on house building, but this is implausible given the shadow cast by Brexit. There is precious little space in government (‘bandwidth’ in the cliché of the day) to focus on anything other than Brexit.

This puts a greater responsibility on local authorities to deliver new housing. A December 2017 report from the National Planning Forum and the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) suggests they are starting to do so. Sixty-five percent of local authorities in England are directly engaged in housing delivery, with 30 local housing companies set up in 2017 alone. The report concludes that there is ‘a growing appetite and capacity in local authorities to return to or increase their roles in providing housing as a core function’. They ‘are well placed to scale up their delivery of housing, if certain barriers can be addressed’ (Morphet and Clifford, 2017: 4).

One frustration for local authorities is the reluctance of developers to build even when they have planning permission.