One of the big measures in today’s Budget was the Help to Buy scheme. It answers two demands: the first for the Tories to continue to support home ownership as what George Osborne called ‘the most human of aspirations’, and the second for the government to do everything it can to get construction moving again.
But there’s an interesting political point here. In the summer, George Osborne frightened the living daylights out of Eric Pickles and his team at the Communities and Local Government department by putting it about that he wanted further relaxations on planning regulations to encourage economic growth through construction. Pickles & Co fought back pretty hard, arguing that the problem was no longer the planning system as the Localism Act and National Planning Policy Framework had dealt with that, but the availability of credit. But then Nick Boles, who the Pickles camp widely regarded as one of ‘Osborne’s spies’, was installed in the department, and started talking about his plans to change the system still more.
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