Is it time to face reality? After two generations of housing policy based on playing blind man’s bluff? ? Is it time for local communities to take back control of their building land? Bluntly, in order for local communities to:take spatial control is it time to nationalise development land? Whatever do such scary ideas mean?
Well, with reluctance I have said it. Nationalisation: a word which conjures up fear and loathing for many. And in the process may alienate readers who fear state interference like they fear rationing and requisition: usually seen as the symbols of a broken state and a failed delivery system. Like many I shared these fears of state interference for many years. But in the 1980’s and 1990’s I watched the market’s total failure in the Thames Valley to deliver the homes wanted by young and not so young alike. Failure acts light a blue flashing light. Experience teaches us to see the difference between success and failure. Some have learnt from decades of spatial failure but others have not. So these numbers below are interesting.
The first home I bought was a new build three bedroom two storey terraced house on the Wates development at Hurst Park, West Molesey in 1969. . It helped that I was employed by them at that time, as a residential land buyer. . Their asking price was £6650. Today it is worth about £675,000. An increase of 100 times over about 60 years! The absolute change in value is scary. But the pattern of price increases is far more useful. Thanks to ChatGPT here are the prices every tenth year, together with the percentage increase each ten years.
YEAR CHANGE PRICE/VALUE
1969 ——— £6650
1979 351% £30,000
1989 225% £95,000
1999 40%. £135,000
2009. 104%. £275,000
2019. 68% £475,000
2026. 49%. £675,000
Think about what the term rationing means? . We have had rationing of building land since the late 1960s. In my planning library I have the 1971 Surrey Development Plan. But at a scale of 1:63,360 so very little detail! When asked by my lecturer to design a new community in 1966 cars were not an issue. Most households did not have one. None had two! But many of the constraints on the supply of building land (rationing was never a popular word amongst planners or policymakers) were already emerging. Rationing land supply had arrived, but very well concealed. As any free market believer knows, restrictions on supply always mean one thing: prices go up. And they did!
So look at the charge sheet of policy failure. Think about the actual effects of rationing.the supply of new homes, by constraining the supply of building land. Unaffordable homes; cheaply built blocks of flats which are now being demolished; overcrowded roads more congested as every decade passes; increasing local dislike of local change; polarised local yaboo politics has replaced civic duty aspirations; short term knee-jerkism has pushed long term spatial strategies out of sight; infrastructure which is forgotten; the consequences of housing an ageing population; economic growth is held back; and so on.
After a lifetime doing property deals, arbitrating property conflicts, , writing about the failures of the property market, and personally living off the dynamic of of a constantly evolving property market, I am more convinced today, than I was a generation ago that there is one culprit which causes these symptoms above all others. One explanation to explain where the fault for housing policy failure can be placed. It is conviction held by free marketeers that the housing market, left to its own devices on its own can deliver the dreams we have for ourselves, our families and our nation. The evidence of 60 years of housing policy failure is everywhere. It can be summed up. Why is fear of change so universal and so widespread? Why is change bad, and therefore must be opposed? Because the changes people see after years of haphazard, call for sites based spatial planning produces results people do not like. At least these are the symptoms the public see and condemn. But there is another part of society that thrives on spatial chaos, and lives in fear of change. It is the landowners, in the rural areas, and the property owners in the urban areas. Their love of chaos, and fear of reform is equally damaging to local community but also important, for their own legitimate, commercial reasons usually are in conflict with local community desires.
These landowner concerns are legitimate and must not be dismissed. Landowners must receive full open market value for their land. And if it includes hope value at the operative date, this must be lie in full. With, in my opinion a further payment to reflect the sale is against their wishes.
Ian Campbell
20 September 2026
