Take my advice, Michael Gove

1 You can’t build your way out of a crisis
This is true of climate change and housing – but particularly true of tackling both together. You won’t meet your net-zero targets if you plaster housing over every available acre, even if they are “zero-carbon-ready” homes. And what housing crisis are you trying to solve with your 300,000-new-homes-per-year target anyway? Is it homelessness? Home-ownership? Affordable rent? These would require very different solutions. Figure out which one you care about and align your incentives accordingly. Look again at Right to Buy, already abolished in both Wales and Scotland, and stop treating it like Thatcher’s sacred cow.

2 Use empty land and greenbelts for environmental gain

The land outside towns, cities and suburbs isn’t blank space. Once you build on it, even with the best of net-gain and net-zero intentions, it won’t produce anything other than a financial asset and angry constituents, while aggravating other issues such as flooding, air and water quality issues and food insecurity. At Defra in 2018, you led on the production of a 25-year Environment Plan. Unlike most Whitehall documents, this continues to have teeth, and indeed is being brought onto the statute books through the Environment Bill.

3 Send back the planning reforms

Beware of style wars over substance. You need to ask yourself if Robert Jenrick’s planning proposals will solve society’s most wicked problems: flooding, air pollution, affordability, overcrowding… Do these planning reforms actually balance economic growth with the need to enhance and conserve the natural environment while adapting to a changing climate? Does it contribute to the Levelling Up agenda in prioritising social impact and social value? Will it win the hearts and minds of Yimby communities and Nimby constituents alike? Short answer: no. The planning reform’s emphasis on a zoning approach has aged particularly badly under Covid (empty Central Business Districts, anyone?). Send it back. It’s political suicide anyway – people hate it, whether or not it’s ‘beautiful’

4 Give power to communities
Communities is in the title of your department, and yet the things people really care about in their community are increasingly out of their control. The dying high street, community consultation in planning, community buildings and assets, safety…. If you believe in democratic accountability then you need to look again at the very local structures and governance that enables this to happen. At a grassroots level, look again at community land trusts, they can deliver on so many of your priorities – from housing to community energy

5 Fund local government properly
Local government showed its mettle through the pandemic by delivering impossible things with infinitesimally small budgets, from vaccine programmes to the transformation of streets into social spaces and cycling infrastructure. Fund local government properly and delegate your challenges to them to solve. You have a spending review. Mayoral devolution in England has been on the backburner for too long. Whitehall and Westminster need the robust challenge that comes from innovative and vocal local politicians. Make. It. Happen

Uma Marman is a researcher that studies urban and housing policy