Ministers ‘should axe laws that give landowners huge profits’ to end Britain’s housing crisis, campaigners claim
Under the shocking 1961 Land Compensation Act, Town Halls have to pay up to 100 times the value of the land if they want to develop housing on the site
LAWS which hand vast profits to fat cat landowners should be ripped up to end Britain’s homes crisis, campaigners say.
The 1961 Land Compensation Act forces councils to pay up to 100 times the value of land they want to develop for housing.
It means farmers and other speculators can pocket millions of pounds in taxpayers’ cash without sticking a shovel in the ground, say housing groups.
The law needs rewriting so councils pay less and still have cash to build community facilities such as schools and parks alongside new homes, the campaigners claim.
It would also mean “less opposition to new development and much better infrastructure”, they have told Housing Minister James Brokenshire.
The 1961 Act means councils have to buy land at the price as if it had planning consent. Farmland can often be worth up to 100 times more.
most read in money
Speculators also rake in profits by buying cheap land and waiting for a chance to sell it at vastly inflated rates. Now Theresa May’s ex-policy aide Will Tanner, from the Onward think tank, has brought together 15 housing groups including the National Housing Federation, Shelter and Crisis to urge the Government to reform the law.
They say councils should be given powers to borrow cash to buy land where they want to build new homes. And by paying the lower rate, they could free £9billion to spend on community facilities.
Their call was backed by Tory MP Neil O’Brien who told The Sun: “Too many new houses are built without the new schools, new doctors’ surgeries and even parking places needed to go with them. So people oppose new houses being built.
“If more were invested in making new homes attractive we could build more badly needed homes for young families.”
SUN SAYS
BRITAIN’S prisons are failing.
The situation at HMP Birmingham was so bad the Government was forced to step in and strip G4S from running it.
Our jails have been allowed to slide into overcrowded, lawless, violent cesspits of drug taking and idleness.
Prisons Minister Rory Stewart last week promised to resign if his reforms don’t fix the crisis.
You might not care about anarchy in jail, so long as crooks are off our streets.
But unless Mr Stewart has funding to make prisons free of drugs and places of rehabilitation and learning, then re-offending rates will only rocket.
And that, in the long-term, will cost our society much more.
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