Plans to buy building land at a discount are a mistake. Saying so gives Labour’s opponents a powerful weapon. Instead Labour must reach out to the other parties.
Lead story in today’s front cover of the The Times, is a piece by their Policy Editor, Oliver Wright. He reports that councils are to be given powers to cheaply and compulsorily buy green belt land for housing in order that the government can deliver Labour’s pledge to build 1.5 million new homes by 2030. If so, this is a naive decision. . Its consequences will be moreover delay, fewer houses by 2030, poorer quality new homes, an increase in local resistance to change and more.
Landowners selling fields in the Thames Valley worth £10,000 an acre with consent to build homes for £5,000,000 per acre is powerful. And evokes my total sympathy for the government’s aspirations. But this blunderbus way of proceeding is goofy. It is far worse:a massive mistake. Goodwill for the government’s building intentions will erode; honeymoon dividends will cease; fears of confiscation of assets without fair payment will multiply. The enemies of Labour will say this intention shows Labour are a democratic threat; that they believe in sequestration of assets without fair compensation: the benchmark of banana republics and and socialist autocracies. In short Labour will hand their opponents a powerful weapon. How very short-sighted of Keir Starmer’s new government. I am sad.
The principle that the government will pay full market value for any assets it buys must never be breached by a Labour government. Call it the eleventh Commandment. If this payment includes lottery levels of hope value, that must be paid too. But are this new government blind? They have it in their gift, if they are patient, and if they do not act like bullocks in a porcelain shop, to buy the same land at full market value including largely extinguished hope value in a few years time if they are patient, provided they work with the other political parties, and if they have won the trust of local councils for their housing supply policies. How to do this is set out in detail in the 29 April 2024 Housing Manifesto blog.
In brief, the government must use time; they must convince landowners and their army of clever advisers that a policy U-turn in 2030 or in 2035 will not happen, and they must teach councils who represent local voters but will also be the government’s agents that their best interests too are to to join their alliance of change. Councils will become landowners, the arbiters of local spatial uses through their regulatory powers, , and clever visionaries like the old established landed estates adept at creating premium values. Yes, this is long term planning. It is visionary planning. It is strategic planning. These days it is called sustainable development. So far we have heard a lot about it, but seen little of it.
Short term planning of the sort described in the Times today is stasis planning. It is the symptom of blind ignorance , no thinking dialogue and echoes the fourteen years of housing policy failure that I hoped had ended in July. Labour, please deny this story in the Times today.,and declare your intention to reach out to Tories and to the Liberal Democrats after the summer break with a radical change of direction: the establishment of a cross-party homes building alliance with these objectives
~ land for new homes and infrastructure will be acquired at full market value;
~ after the expiry of all current local plans, in 10/15 years all future at scale housing land will be sold to builders by councils with consent at market value;
~ councils who decide to buy strategic land holdings will not be funded by the Treasury but with loans guaranteed by the government;
~ councils who appoint master planners charged with advising on spatial building options from c.2030 to c.2080 to deliver government targets will have these costs through loans paid by long term land value capture.
~ all councils will be encouraged to join with their neighbours within shared travel catchment areas to set up new town development corporations owned by the councils concerned.
The declaration will have a set up target. Perhaps 4 July 2025? This story if true is an error of judgement and needs to be reversed without delay.
Ian Campbell
12 August 2024
