Failed housing policies

SIR – The Government’s housing policy is in disarray. Ministers are still bleating that the problem is the planning system, in spite of their own figures showing that approvals for new houses are far outstripping the number of houses being built.

There are several reasons why house building is slow. The massive rise in the value of land with planning permission means that it is treated as an investment opportunity, with developers slowing build rates if house prices show signs of weakening. There is also a shortage of skilled workers, which makes it difficult to increase the build rate.

Expansion of the Help to Buy programme sounds like a step in the right direction. Sadly it is the opposite: pumping money into the housing market and keeping prices high.

Current housing policy allows landowners and their agents to make money out of land, while failing to address the key issue of providing the right kind of houses, in the right places and at the right prices.

The Government should be exploring ways for local authorities to buy land cheaply, with or without compulsory purchase intervention. This would allow them to contract builders to build within predetermined time scales. They would have to consider more efficient ways of building, such as modular construction. Landowners would still make a profit, just not the jackpots they currently receive. Laurence Heath

Wokingham, Berkshire