The previous blog dated 4 August 2025, Housing supply: can cities deliver? contained a new proposal for a National Land Service, or NLS. Exchanges since then on LinkedIn following a subsequent post about the New Towns Taskforce report, exposed lack of clarity about the role of a new National Land Service. This blog explains how the NLS will function. Lack of implementation detail is due to the concept of the NLS taking shape intuitively. The outline here is only that: simply an outline, which focuses on the historic problem areas. Detailed policy will need to be worked up by experts in the field, once the need for a National Land Service, ie. the deliberate use of time in planning, is accepted across the political spectrum.
The NLS starting point is basic. Progress will not happen in overcoming the housing supply deficit until the means of supplying adequate building land with local support is found.. Obtaining local support first requires the removal of irrelevant conflict thriving at the heart of our planning system. Because ill will breeds damaging toxicity. Spatial policy making locally needs a non-antagonistic, far-sighted way of thinking. Unfortunately need for this step away from political confrontation towards civic thinking is not yet recognised. Currently the planning system seeks to deliver results to two distinct audiences, each with divergent agenda. The reality it fails to serve both. And has failed them for a generation.
What has happened since the seventies ended? When the obvious spaces were filled-up? Locally mature civic leadership across the political spectrum went AWOL. Instead we have had phoney ideological division for two, even three decades at national and local level. Specifically despite planning, by definition being rooted in geography; and therefore needing a framework of spatial guidelines, it has become some sort of free market, versus interventionist battleground. This school playground mind-set blocks a civic or soladity way of spatial planning. . Toxicity it is now the elephant in the room. A false divide, it is the culprit. As a result, useless conflict continues to deliver local anger and national stasis. Finding the common ground is impossible; poisoned by unwanted toxicity. . In my opinion it has caused three plus decades of non-fulfilment of housing needs; erosion of our open countryside and far too much urban tat. Without radical re-design of the delivery process the next step is slumland for those without and increasing local distrust amongst those with.
Now the solution, but first an aside: the land-use problems we face are created by population growth, ie. an ageing population and immigration. Both are finite problems. Indigenous English fertility rates are far below the 2.1 replacement threshold. The house building problem we face is therefore short lived. To save our valued open countryside and renew the faded urban areas in our cities whilst leaving a proud, exciting inheritance for the next generation is possible. It requires shrewd civic thinking locally a generation ahead, and the alignment of policy priorities in Westminster which give equal weight to long term, and short term national needs. With these mind-sets in place the prevailing policy fog will lift. We will see at last the horizon.
The NLS solution advocated here is based on experience. First considerable market experience; rejection of previous initiatives; three, years of personal resistance locally to change of process by public sector planning officials; four,, the lack of any degree of agreement about why the system is broken, so plainly apparent amongst the diverse range of land, planning and property professionals; and five, above all bitter reality: the inability of the newer generations to buy a home of their own. The claims by the Keir Starmer led government that the nation’s economic growth is held back by the failed planning system adds weight to frustration at the lack of progress. Increasing media focus on the damage done by unaffordable homes and street homelessness, and the superficiality of the associated debate adds fuel to this discontent.. The NLS proposal put forward here may not be the complete answer, but it highlights where the danger areas lie, and suggests a workable solution based on experience and time.
Separation of function is the start point. Separation of function is essential to remove deep rooted, long established land use conflict. There is the local perspective of change (of land use). And then there is national perspective, the need to deliver national policy priorities: homes, jobs and infrastructure investment necessary to fuel economic growth. Reconciling reality, that the market always wins eventually, with local local fears and local dreams which will often differ.Those inclined to deny reality advocated here will be endorsed or discredited by playing the time card. It does not matter. Premature decisions can wait. We all know when we know. We also know when we do not know. When we know we do not know, the wise decision is to wait, until we do know. Trite, but valid when playing the time card to decide policy, for example where to build and where not to build. Land use protection policies like AONB, green belt, grey belt, white land are past examples of this thinking.
Separation of function is key to deliver local support for local land use change. Because the widespread lack of local support for local change lies at the heart of local resistance to new building. Viewed differently, it is absolutely necessary that local opponents of local change must, before construction starts become supporters of local land use change. They must wish their areas become hosts to new homes and new infrastructure. Financial incentives at street level will be necessary. Treasury support will not be needed. Some areas, where their primary function is a dormitory role for today’s workers and retired workers may never accept this hosting role. In such cases, their fair contribution to the national due will be financial, to support those who do accept change. On which I say more below.
Recognition of free market failure is the second point. Recognition that the private sector has, over one and a half generations, failed to assemble building sites on the scale needed, in the locations councils would select given the ability. (The call for sites is a disgraceful abdication of community responsibility; reluctantly operated by local councils with one arm tied behind their back). In rural areas and low density urban regeneration areas it is rare for builders and developers alone to be able to put sites together if there are more than two owners. In higher density urban localities this ownership fragility means the ability of builders and developers alone to assemble large sites, at the magnitude needed to deliver premium vales (the ultimate measure of popular support) is hopeless. In both cases, the active support and promotion by the local authority is indispensable to deliver more ambitious outcomes.. So councils in reality are involved willy-nilly. But they don’t have to have a profit share as their only payment. . Instead what they must have is the power to make land use change take place where they want it, when they want it, with a user-mix that balances market evidence, ie. the prospect of premium values, with their own civic priorities.
Recruiting and using the boon that policies wired into the passing of time is the third tool. A generation and a half of failed spatial policies used as a default by local councils for decades (the call for sites system of determining where to build) offers crystal clear evidence that local plan spatial policies are a hotch-podge of short termism and local councils spatial helplessness. But they like their helplessness. It avoids the need to show local leadership, when dealing with contentious issues, such as where to build. It is not their call. Others can be blamed. Crazy isn’t’t it!
The answer? It is for councils to use time. In the short term, during the life cycle of existing local plans, the timing and location of new homes will be unchanged: relying on the call for sites system. No change is needed. Change will happen when local plans expire, in 10+ years time. In the meantime, councils will be directed to identify in the 10+ period, after local plans end, where they want future building to go in their area. These sites, sufficient to accommodate two generations, 60+ years will be identified and placed on a new national register of development land under ministerial control, Once officially registered these sites will become the long term building land supply source for each local council. The clever councils will immediately appreciate that provided they use time and location uncertainty spatial tools to stifle the growth of hope value, their community will capture nearly 100% of future hope value without in anyway penalising land owners financial entitlements to be paid full market value. Put another way, the way to have your cake and eat it will be for local councils to adopt and register their future preferred building locations ten or more years ahead. These at scale locations will in effect have achieved outline consent to build, but zero information on what, where and when. Hope. value cannot take root in these conditions. In the meantime councils can take steps to secure ransom sites within these sites at little cost.
The suggestion above, to financially penalise residents who do not accept new building on the scale national needs dictate, through rates surcharges to incentivise residents elsewhere seems highly contentious. At first sight this is correct. Viewed though a 10+ years lens the proposal will cease to be contentious. The threat of local rates surcharges will act as a reality check to restrain extreme nimby thinking. Local residents and their local council leaders will see there are choices to be made. This decision making will reinforce local democratic thinking within a civic context about what is in the interest of themselves, their families, their own community and the nation’s priorities. In the meantime die-hard local opponents of local change will loss influence and local leaders will regain their confidence to plan far ahead.
Ian Campbell
12 August 2025
