Burnham bounce, Badenoch buzz

Labour left Liverpool buoyed by a new leader. The Conservatives left Birmingham buoyed by the one they already had.

Twelve months ago, the conference parlour game in Manchester was guessing which intervention from Robert Jenrick would undermine Kemi Badenoch next. Jenrick is now in Reform, and the contrast in Birmingham was striking. Fringe events were busy, conversations focused on policy rather than personalities, and Badenoch’s grip on the party appeared firmer than at any point since she became leader. As Sir James Cleverly observed at one event, the infighting has simply migrated to Reform.

Badenoch’s closing speech captured that confidence. She presented the next election as a battle of ideas between a government that believes politicians create growth and a Conservative Party that believes ’what people earn belongs to them, not government’. Her pitch returned to familiar Conservative territory: work, enterprise, home ownership and backing business.

Her headline pledge was that nobody would pay inheritance tax on their family home. This sat alongside previously announced commitments to abolish stamp duty on the purchase of a primary residence and reject a mansion tax, drawing a clear dividing line with Labour and seeking to reconnect the party with voters who associate home ownership and economic aspiration with Conservatism.

Greater unity has not yet translated into electoral progress. Professor Sir John Curtice reminded members that the party remains at around 20% in the polls, below where it stood at the last general election and generally third behind Labour and Reform. Badenoch acknowledged that voters may like what they see in the shop window but are not yet ready to buy. Even so, the recent defection of Babergh District Councillor Daniel Potter from the Greens offered a small sign of momentum in a region where the Conservatives are seeking to regain ground.

The argument before the programme

The Right Way is deliberately not a manifesto. For the built environment, its diagnosis matters more than its pledges.

Published on the eve of conference, Badenoch’s essay is modelled on The Right Approach, the 1976 document that set out the Conservative argument ahead of the 1979 manifesto. It follows the same sequence: establish the principles, diagnose the problem and then develop the policy response.

The essay is unusually candid about the party’s record, acknowledging that Conservative governments between 2010 and 2024 preserved or extended much of what they had opposed in rhetoric. Its central claim is simple:  ‘Government doesn’t create growth. People do. Business does.’

For the built environment, the central argument is that regulation has become a one-way ratchet. Each rule may appear defensible in isolation, but together they create a system that is costly, complex and difficult to navigate.

Badenoch points to the Lower Thames Crossing as the clearest example. First proposed in 2009, the project took 16 years, and more than £1.2bn in planning costs before construction began, supported by an application running to almost 360,000 pages. For Badenoch, it demonstrates how the time, cost and complexity of securing approval have become barriers to delivery.

A bonfire of red tape

The party’s central message on planning was clear: less time lost to regulators means less time and money spent before a spade goes into the ground.

Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith MP backed that diagnosis with policy, promising ‘the most ambitious deregulation project in a generation’. At its heart is a proposal to abolish the Environment Agency and Natural England, transferring their essential functions to DEFRA under direct ministerial control.

Shadow Environment Secretary Victoria Atkins MP described the move as the first stage of a year-long review of all 34 DEFRA arm’s-length bodies. She argued that ministers should no longer be held accountable for decisions they do not control.

The accompanying housing package includes scrapping the Future Homes Standard, replacing Section 106 and CIL with a single levy, streamlining affordable housing obligations and withdrawing from the Aarhus Convention, an international treaty linking environmental rights to human rights. The party claims the package could cut up to £50,000 from the cost of a new-build home. Badenoch put the argument more colourfully, promising that nobody from Natural England would turn up ‘with a clipboard counting bats and newts’. The reaction to the party’s deregulatory agenda, particularly on environmental matters, among communities in its traditional rural heartlands will be one to watch.

More fundamental reform remains under consideration. Shadow Housing Secretary Katie Lam MP has been asked to rethink the planning system from the ground up, while Shadow Minister for Housing and Planning Gareth Bacon MP suggested that a zonal system ’might work’. This had previously been proposed in the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto before being abandoned following backbench opposition.

The conference fringes provided plenty of evidence for the party’s diagnosis. Shadow Minister for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities David Simmonds MP described developers securing council consent, only for the Environment Agency to commission a two-year report followed by another lengthy appraisal. Bacon estimated that regulation and taxation add around £76,000 to the cost of each home before profit, while another session heard that Building Safety Regulator approvals for new buildings are averaging 48 weeks, against the 12-week statutory target.

The industry broadly welcomed the direction of travel, but with qualifications. Planning consultancy Boyer cautioned that many requirements are rooted in primary legislation, meaning that transferring functions into DEFRA would not, by itself, remove delay. It also warned that lower build costs would not necessarily translate pound for pound into lower sale prices. Environmental groups strongly criticised the proposals.

Councillors in the room, green belt off the table

The party wants councillors at the heart of planning decisions, while its position remains firmly brownfield first and green belt last.

Lam described local government and councillors as the Conservative Party’s backbone. Simmonds reinforced that message by defending planning committees against the Government’s National Scheme of Delegation. She argued that restricting their role would weaken local accountability without significantly accelerating decisions.

Industry representatives, including Vistry and the RTPI, offered a different view. They argued that councillors’ influence should be focused earlier in the process through local plans, masterplans and design codes, allowing officers to determine individual applications within an agreed framework. The difference centres on how best to balance democratic accountability with speed and certainty.

On land supply, Bacon described grey belt as an ‘attempt to gaslight the public’ and acknowledged that Conservatives rarely win by campaigning to build on the green belt. Developers and promoters pushed back, with Hallam Land urging the party to retain housing targets and Lichfields warning that brownfield land alone would not deliver the range of homes families need. Harlow Council Leader Cllr Dan Swords argued that London’s housing pressures should not simply be passed on to surrounding authorities.

For applicants in Conservative-led authorities, the implications are clear. Councillors should be engaged early and given a meaningful opportunity to shape proposals, including those likely to be determined under delegated powers. Grey belt development will remain politically contentious, while attempts to renegotiate affordable housing commitments after consent risk damaging local trust.

Cheaper power, lower build costs

The energy offer focuses on lower bills and stronger growth. For the built environment, its wider significance may lie in reducing pressure on construction costs.

‘Energy is growth,’ Badenoch told conference, setting out a mission to deliver cheap, clean and abundant power. The Right Way commits the party to repealing and replacing the Climate Change Act, scrapping the Carbon Tax, removing the Renewables Obligation from bills, taking VAT off household electricity for three years and accelerating grid connections. Large energy users would also have greater freedom to generate their own power.

Renewables and nuclear energy, including small modular reactors, remain part of the proposed mix. However, the essay offers few specific commitments on solar, wind or biogas and warns against replacing dependence on imported gas with reliance on Chinese-made panels and batteries.

The implications extend beyond household bills. Steel, cement, bricks and glass all require significant energy to produce, so cheaper industrial power could ease pressure on construction costs, although the party has not quantified the potential effect.

Scrapping the Future Homes Standard presents a different trade-off. Bacon estimated that doing so would remove around £10,200 from the cost of each new home. Applicants in Conservative-led authorities may therefore need to make the case for energy efficiency through lower running costs for residents, rather than carbon reduction alone.

London: viability, design and local benefit.

In the capital, the emerging Conservative offer combines housing viability and design with a call for boroughs to retain more of the wealth they generate.

James Cleverly, who stepped down as Shadow Housing Secretary in September in order to campaign for the Conservative nomination for Mayor of London in 2028, used a fireside chat to outline his emerging offer for London. He argued that tax and regulation are holding back housing delivery, and that the London Plan contributes to the problem.

He prefers the gentle densification of well-connected neighbourhoods, including sympathetic upward extensions and the conversion of former commercial buildings. He also pointed to publicly owned land around major transport hubs that remains undeveloped or unviable, arguing that tax and regulation are preventing these well-connected sites from delivering new homes. He suggested some of the savings from lower development costs should be reinvested in better design and the public realm to help address the concerns that often drive local opposition. His verdict on Sadiq Khan’s record was measured but clear: not catastrophic, ‘but has he been any good? I really don’t think so.’

Kensington and Chelsea Council Leader Cllr Elizabeth Campbell focused on the financial relationship between London and national government. She argued that, as the Government pursues ‘growth in every postcode’, supporting growth elsewhere should not come at the expense of continued investment in London. Kensington and Chelsea is among the authorities most impacted by a review of Government grant funding formulas, under the Fair Funding Review.

Campbell noted that Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster together raised around £30m in business rates last year but, under the Government’s new arrangements, would retain just 1.8% of that income. For developers, this reinforces the importance of demonstrating the visible, lasting benefits that schemes can deliver for local boroughs and communities.

What next?

The immediate focus shifts to the Autumn Budget on 28 October, when the Conservatives will seek to draw a clear dividing line with the Government on tax, spending and growth.

For the housing sector, questions remain over the proposed single levy, how affordable housing and infrastructure would be secured, and how much of the claimed £50,000 saving would survive the underlying legislation. Katie Lam’s planning review and the review of DEFRA’s arm’s-length bodies will begin to provide answers, while the choice of a London mayoral candidate will indicate how the national agenda could translate to the capital.

Next May’s local elections, now confirmed to proceed on existing boundaries following the pause in Local Government Reorganisation, will provide an early test of the party’s progress. Long before Badenoch’s national ambitions are tested, her agenda will influence how Conservative councillors approach development across London and across the country.