In the mid-1990s, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown commissioned a report on planning, housing supply and the economy. The Barker Review (HM Treasury, 2004) was prompted by concern that Britain's economic performance was being held back by planning constraints affecting particularly the allocation of land for housing. The Review, and a number of commentaries alongside it, suggested that there was indeed evidence to support such a correlation and that compared to its counterparts elsewhere in Europe, or the OECD, Britain has endured persistently low housing supply elasticity. That is, that UK housing plc tends not to bring new supply on to the market fast enough when prices increase. Land is, of course, a key ingredient in housing development and so fingers of blame were pointed at the volume of land available for housing and the speed at which that land is released.

Whilst Barker devoted most of her attention to regional planning and to the big cities (and especially to London), for many rural housing commentators this debate seemed like a tour around all-too-familiar territory. Similar evidence pointing to a slow and ineffective planning process, unable to keep pace with housing need or demand, had been presented intermittently over the previous 30 years. In this chapter we look at policy and outcomes at the end of the 2000s, tracing the persistence of the debate and its links with representations of the countryside since the 1970s. We also consider the latest developments, especially the call for a market perspective and more responsive land release (serving ‘affordability’). We argue that one of the implications of strategic market assessment and the drawing of ‘housing market areas’ (noted in Chapter 6) – that is, that rural areas have no urgent affordability problem because rural residents are able to buy homes in nearby market towns or comparable centres – is an illusion that serves to perpetuate the social reconfiguration of Britain's countrysides.

A shortage of land?

The claim made by some commentators, and especially those linked to environmental lobbies, that Britain has an acute shortage of land appears highly questionable. Scotland, for example, has approximately 3 per cent of its land mass under ‘urban use’, that is, with any form of building on it (quoted by Towers et al, 2006). Wales has a similar proportion.