Well, they could be part of the big spend!

On October 22nd the Birmingham Post carried news of an expensive report on potential housing by Nathaniel Lichfield & Partners which had been commissioned by the Local Government Dept. The report will go forward to a public enquiry next April into housing and the Regional Spatial Strategy.

The three month study had been able to identify sufficient land in the region to build up to a further 445,000 dwellings, a quarter more than councils via the still surviving West Midlands Regional Assembly had felt was a maximum.

Reactions to the findings were not positive. It meant among other things building on green belt land in Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire. Assembly members were angry at what was seen as an attempt to bounce councils into planning for unacceptably high levels of housing growth. Birmingham, for instance, would have to build 10,000 more homes than already committed to.

Some assembly members felt that the recommendations were either unacceptable or undeliverable, or both. Others were appalled by the cost, at £210,000, which will rise still further with additional costs incurred by the firm attending briefing sessions to present the report to various groups and at various times. This is part of the government's consultancy culture into which billions of pounds are pumped annually.

One assembly member pointed out that the cost per page of the report was approximately £750.
Others merely recorded their views that the cost was unacceptable.

It seems that by one means or another the government will compel building of many extra thousands of dwellings in the West Midlands, and doubtless in other regions also, to reach the target which John Prescott had plucked out of the air, and in the process do damage to the green lungs of our communities, - the green belts.

Could the building be part of Brown's spendaholic solution to our recession, as the title suggested? Mercifully not. Even if he succeeds in driving rapidly through the enquiry process in the Spring of 2009, riding roughshod over objections, and even with the construction industry with spare capacity, it is difficult to see much happening before the election in 2010. By then, with good luck, he will be gone. Someone else will then have to clear up the mess.