"If we are to get people back out shopping in their local town centres we need to give them more power to prevent shops being opened there"

Glorious DoubleThink from the Local Government Association, reported by the BBC:

... the Local Government Association, which represents councils in England and Wales, warned that the move [to liberalise planning/change of use restrictions] could alter the face of High Streets for the worse without residents being able to have their say.

"We have been clear that if we are to get people back out shopping in their local town centres we need to give them more say on what type of businesses and shops open there,"; said Mike Jones, chairman of the association's housing board. "Instead from today they will have less. Planning controls were not designed to make life difficult for business but to act as a "democratic quality control", he added.

"Most people would be more inclined to visit their local High Streets if they saw a resurgence in the sort of cherished local, good-quality shops, restaurants and businesses which can be at the very heart of communities. Instead, this blanket national policy will make it easier than ever for High Streets to become ghettos for clusters of 'here today, gone tomorrow' money lenders and betting shops."

Clearly, whatever democratically decided restrictions you impose, these cannot dictate which shops WILL open, they can only dictate which type of shops WILL NOT open. And there is such a thing as consumer choice:

If there is demand for "cherished local, good quality shops etc" then enteprising businessmen will open them. If there is demand for "here today, gone tomorrow money lenders and betting shops" then enterprising businessmen will open those instead. Simply preventing the latter category of shop from opening up is no guarantee that the former category will open instead. The chances are the premises will just stay vacant until they are re-opened as charity shops (to take advantage of the Business Rates discounts).

I don't know the exact figure, but on a decent High Street with a few dozen shops, restaurants etc, how many of those does any one individual actually visit? Not many, probably only three or four. How many of those shops are visited regularly by at least half of local residents? Not many, probably two or three.

So if each shop's existence required democratic approval, i.e. each resident is asked "Do you need or want Shop X? Do you need or want Shop Y?" them most of them would be shut down.

Or to paraphrase The Stigler, "we don't want the tide to come in, but we refuse to pay for a sea wall".

More FakeStatistics Tomfoolery

Via a post at John Page's, I read this article at "Inside Housing", which contains the following bald claim:

The debate about immigration and housing is as much about perceptions as facts. And so, depending on your point of view, it’s obvious that immigrants are jumping the queue even if the facts demonstrate that it’s a myth that they are...

I then clicked the word 'myth' to an article only relates to housing managed by housing associations, which is less than half of all 'social housing' (the upmarket bit, the downmarket bit is managed by local authorities), so those figures are irrelevant. Moving on:

The study for the Local Government Association and Equality and Human Rights Commission last year that showed that only 2% of people in social housing were born outside the UK and also identified that the vast majority of new migrants go into the bottom end of the private rented sector*.

As it happens, that's a misquote as well, the first bullet point in the LGA press release says:

New migrants to the UK over the last five years make up around three per cent** of the total UK population but are less than two per cent of the total of those in social housing.

OK. Let's crunch some round numbers:
4 million units of social housing in the UK (local authority or housing association).
Average length of tenancy 25 years.
Hence units to be allocated each year = 160,000.
Number of households on waiting lists 1.6 million, so average time on waiting list almost certainly more than five years.
On that basis, there'd be next to no 'recent arrivals' in social housing, because 'recent arrivals' are people who've been here less than five years, natch.

Alternatively:
4 million units x 2% occupied by 'recent arrivals' = 80,000
Units allocated in last five years = 5 x 160,000 (from above) = 800,000
On that basis, ten per cent of available social housing has been given to 'recent arrivals'.

Now, the first article they linked to said that slightly less than five per cent of housing managed by housing associations was allocated to 'recent arrivals', so if ten per cent of all social housing has gone to 'recent arrivals', the proportion for housing managed by local authorities must be rather higher than ten per cent, somewhere in the region of twelve or thirteen per cent.

So while the underlying statistics may be authentic, they actually show the opposite of what The Righteous say that they show.

* 'go into the bottom end of the private rented sector'? Or should we say 'are claiming Housing Benefit'?

** 'Around three per cent'? Or should we say 'Around 1.8 million'?