Labour’s Approach

Sir Keir Starmer says his party will stop speculators blocking building and will give councils power to designate sites for large scale development. These are two worthy objectives with one gigantic proviso. Both initiatives are aligned with the market; not enforced on open market without full open market value compensation, including 100% hope value when according to the RICS Red Book rules it does apply. To disarm local speculators they must be equitably, amply treated. Doing so will pay local communities’ future generations abundant dividends.

Local governance accountability must change too. Large scale development, driven by a fantasy or by a vision that tomorrow we can do better, can only deliver in timescales uncoupled from local elections. Think what can be achieved in one or two generations? There you have the gauge of local delivery.

And from where does the local leadership come? Not the local vested interests who naturally follow their own commercial agenda. Instead delivery will need local cross-border new town development corporations with some non local long term board members from the leading landed estates, experts in creating premium values-the measure of success.

There are few opportunities for the public sector to win the jackpot. But this is one. Creating tomorrow’s heightened land value’s will be in the gift of the local delivery body. They decide where; they decide when; they decide density. Look more than 10/15 years ahead and open market hope value vanishes. Uncertainty chokes it growth. Its new appearance will be determined locally, and shrewd councils will already own or control the land on which it grows. Councils will own the only pair of shears available locally, needed to shape the fantasy for the future.

Ian Campbell

28 September 2022