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I didn’t know Jackie Sadek before her appointment to become Chair of Ipswich Vision, although I had seen her name as a participant on Bill Grimsey’s report into the future of the High Street. I suggested to the Ipswich Society Executive that we invite her to speak after the AGM. Some were sceptical, they didn’t know her, or know of her, but others supported the idea.
Her new position should, at least by the time of the AGM (which was still months away), give her an insight into the rights and wrongs of the town. Jackie agreed and the date was set.
Unfortunately, her new post didn’t last and she wrote to us, not backing out as I expected but offering to talk about Britain’s housing crisis, and how it affects Ipswich. Very relevant given that Crest Nicholson are just starting to build 1,100 houses at Henley Gate, Mersea Homes are applying for 1,020 at Red House Farm and Bellway, 815 west of Westerfield Road; all are part of Ipswich Garden Suburb (or the Northern Fringe).
Jackie has just written a book (with Peter Bill) Broken Homes, Britain’s Housing Crisis copies of which she brought along.
At the AGM Jackie was brilliant, knowledgeable, well-informed and with lots of insight into the inner workings of the large-scale house builders – 60% of all new houses are built by the top eight house builders, i.e. they control the market, they control the price and by each building less that one a week they control availability. Thus increasing output to solve the national housing shortage won’t be easy.
Jackie’s take on this is that it is the economy that has the greatest influence on the market, evidenced by the rise and fall of house sales between and during periods of recession. Jackie spent some time working for Greg Clark, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. At the time they were working on the Devolution and Local Growth Agenda, the very beginning of the Governments solution to increasing the number of homes being built.
It has taken a considerable amount of time to get the Government to admit that there is a housing crisis, however they still cannot agree the cause. Gavin Barwell, MP for Croydon, worked on the initial White Paper under Teresa May and Sajid Javid, but they would still not admit publicly to the crisis. Javid simply wanted to increase targets (300,000 per annum by building on the Green Belt). The Treasury felt that the problem was the planning system and Number 10 simply wanted market reform – but not on the Green Belt.
Meanwhile, the house builders hold a land bank (with planning permission) of somewhere near one million homes nationally. To a certain extent this is true in Ipswich where planning permission has, in the past been granted for new homes for the vacant lots on Orwell Quay, Eagle Wharf and the plot bounded by Slade Street, Fore Street and Salthouse Street. The application was for 47 Key Street. Jackie suggested that we could build 800 units almost immediately if we sorted the traffic gyratory system in and around Star Lane.
However, during her short spell working in Ipswich, Jackie realised that solutions to what appeared on paper to be simple problems, weren’t going to come easily. No politician would dare interfere with ‘traffic’ for fear of losing votes.
John Norman