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Shelter calls for ‘decisive government action’ on land reform
Housing charity Shelter has called for government “to act decisively” to make the policy changes needed to bring down land prices.
In a collection entitled Grounds for Change, it has published 12 essays on land reform written by housing policy experts from across the political spectrum and shared exclusively with Inside Housing.
Introducing the essays, Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, wrote: “Over the last 50 years we have created a system where almost every scrap of land for new communities and homes is maximised to deliver the highest possible return for the landowner.
“Almost all land value – which is created by infrastructure, communities and the granting of planning consent – flows to the landowner. But if we shared that value more evenly between communities and the landowner we could address our housing emergency and get back to doing development better.”
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Clive Betts, chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee, contributed one essay looking at international examples of land reform.
He wrote: “Much of the success of the high-profile developments in Freiburg and Amsterdam rested on the fact that a substantial proportion of the land was already owned by the public sector.”
Acknowledging that it would be too simplistic to suggest that the UK copies the German or Dutch models, he nevertheless insisted: “It shows what can be achieved with political will and government backing, and there is still much that can be learned from these examples.”
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Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, wrote in her essay that tackling land reform is crucial to dealing with the housing crisis.
She wrote: “It’s time to change the law to make it possible for public bodies like local authorities to be able to buy land more cheaply.
“A small change to the 1961 Land Compensation Act to allow the compulsory purchase of land at much closer to existing use values would bring down prices across the land market.”
In an essay on using land reform to boost delivery of social housing, meanwhile, Shelter’s own policy manager Rose Grayston wrote: “In a world where the price of land reflects what will be built on it, communities will have far more freedom to define development outcomes for themselves.
“These social homes will then become the foundations of strong communities, replacing a failed generation of revolving-door private tenancies.”
