Land will be seized from fat cats who fail to build on it in time as government targets big builders

LAND will be seized from fat cat developers if they fail to build on it in time, under radical new powers to be unveiled tomorrow.

Councils will also be able to slap orders on firms to finish plots within two years, or lose their planning permission.

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And ministers will allow local authorities to buy back the land with compulsory purchasing orders in a bid to end the scourge of "land banking."

The major clampdown on big builders who have cornered the housing market is one of a blistering series of major reforms in a bid to see a million more houses built by 2020.

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid will unveil the long-awaited new housing blueprint tomorrow.

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With house prices still rocketing, the Cabinet minister warned that “a whole generation could be left behind” if the government doesn’t act now.

The average home now costs almost eight times more than Brits’ annual earnings - an all time record - leaving home ownership out of the reach of millions.

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Mr Javid said: “We need to do better, and that means tackling the failures at every point in the system.

“The housing market in this country is broken and the solution means building many more houses in the places that people want to live.”

Significantly increasing supply is the key to solving Britian’s housing crisis, the minister will insist.

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Mr Javid will add: “The only way to halt the decline in affordability and help more people onto the housing ladder is to build more homes.

“Let’s get Britain building.”

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The housing white paper, published in Parliament today, will also;

• propose tough new criteria on councils in high demand areas to calculate how many new homes they must build every five years
• remind them they are now allowed to build on the green belt in “exceptional circumstances” that there is no room left in towns to fulfil new quotas
• allow taller buildings to go up in towns, to see more ‘high density’ mansion blocks erected
• introduce a £3bn new loan fund for smaller builders to give them a bigger share of the housing market

There will also be a fresh push to build more houses to rent, to push costs down for renters down.

The assault on big developers comes as campaigners say they are now strangling the market in a bid to keep house prices high.

Since 2006, a huge 700,000 potential homes have been granted planning permission without being built.

A total of 60% of all new houses are now being built by just 10 companies.

In the blueprint, building firms will also have to publicly declare how quickly they are delivering projects before they are picked for new jobs.