“How much public land is available for house-building? Astonishingly, no-one knows – not even the Government.” [Who owns England?]
“Why doesn’t the district council borrow the money to buy up the land banks accumulated by the big builders which make up Sidmouth’s housing allocations – and build some social housing?!” [commentator]
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Some five years ago, this blog looked at the possibilities around council land and social housing. At the time, sold-off public land was creating minuscule amounts of affordable housing, whilst in our own backyard, under its Knowle Relocation Project, the district council chose to sell off most of that particular chunk of public land, rather than revert to the original policy from the 1960s. As recorded by the Sidmouth Herald on 15th January 1968: “It is the intention that part of the building should be used for housing (the major part of the purchase price is for this purpose) and the remainder for improved council accommodation…” Such were the days.
And perhaps these days are on the return – and not necessarily in a big-government socialist sort of way, as it was the previous government which introduced new powers for councils to help build more affordable homes: “Councils across the country will be able to buy cheaper land to help build thousands more social and affordable homes, thanks to new government reforms coming into force today (30 April 2024)… Councils will be able to buy land for development through the use of Compulsory Purchase Orders without paying inflated ‘hope value’ costs.”
The current government has extended this, with English councils getting powers to buy greenbelt land without overpaying: “Greenbelt landowners who are unwilling to sell would face compulsory purchase orders (CPOs) that would force them to hand over their land if the site could host a “quality housing scheme” in the public interest.”
The ability for councils to buy land at cheaper prices has been lobbied for now for some time, as “the cost of land is thought to be one of the factors for why not enough homes are being built”.
We are now straying onto very sensitive if not political territory – and that is the question of How much public land is available for house-building?. This is part of the bigger project started almost a decade ago which asked Who owns England? [And this was touched on at the Helping the Sid River – The Sid blog last week with the piece Who owns the River Sid – and its waters?]
How much public land is available for house-building? Astonishingly, no-one knows – not even the Government. This is all the more astonishing because – out of the manifold drivers of our current housing crisis – a simple lack of information ought to be easy to resolve.
Fixing the housing crisis requires us to deal with both wasteful demand (such as speculation, buy-to-let landlords, foreign and offshore investors) and shortage of supply. Free-marketeers sometimes claim there is a housing shortage because the planning system creates a scarcity of available land. This is back-to-front. Land is inherently scarce – they’re not making it anymore, after all – that’s why we have a planning system to decide carefully how it is best used.
It’s also why it’s quite right for the public sector to have a major stake in land-holding in our country, so that it can intervene to procure public goods when the market doesn’t provide them – such as affordable housing. Which brings us to the question of what land the public sector owns that is suitable for house-building. Unfortunately, neither central government nor councils seem to have a firm grasp on what suitable land they possess.
This same piece from 2016 looks at the role of both central government and local councils; and in an updated piece from 2020, Guy Shrubsole of Who owns England asked What land is owned by councils? – and again it’s difficult to get a clear answer.
Finally, to balance the politics a little, last year, at Conservative Home, Sam Bidwell suggested that, to boost revenues and ease the housing crisis, turn the Crown Estate into a sovereign wealth fund:
The Government should work with local authorities to boost the Estate’s domestic portfolio. Councils should be encouraged (gently) to sell their real estate assets to it, providing a short-term cash injection for under-funded councils, while bolstering the Crown Estate’s long-term ability to maximise profits.
English councils alone own around 1.3 million acres of land, much of which lies undeveloped or underdeveloped. Local councils have proven to be woefully ineffective at utilising their land; the stories of Middle England district councils captured by NIMBYism are many and varied.
Instead, let’s turn the land over to an institution with a record of sensible, long-termist development, boosting the earning capabilities of our nascent sovereign wealth fund in the process. However, these sales should come with strings attached; increasing the Crown Estate’s domestic holdings also provides an opportunity to alleviate our housing crisis. As part of these sales, the Estate should be obliged to commit to ambitious house-building targets, replicating the success of Hemel’s Garden Communities from Bodmin to Blyth.
As a commentator suggests: “Why doesn’t the district council borrow the money to buy up the land banks accumulated by the big builders which make up Sidmouth’s housing allocations – and build some social housing?!”
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