May adviser backed forced land discounting

THERESA May’s housing adviser has backed a controversial campaign to force landowners to offer huge discounts on the price of their land, it can be revealed.

Toby Lloyd called for an overhaul of compulsory purchase laws months before his appointment to Downing Street in April. Writing on the website of Shelter, Mr Lloyd, then head of policy at the housing and homelessness charity, said the Government should be able to buy up land at “true market value”, rather than current rates, which generally include a speculative uplift based on planning permission that a site could gain for future development.

“The current value of land is inflated – because its value is dictated by the wildest dreams of the landowner and enforced through legal processes ... We need to reset the price of land to its true market value,” he wrote in November.

“That means reforming the compulsory purchase laws ... which ultimately determine the market price of land.”

Last week a coalition of organisations, led by new think tank Onward, and including Shelter, started a formal campaign for such a move, with an open letter to James Brokenshire, the Housing Secretary. Mr Lloyd “liked” a tweet by Will Tanner, Mrs May’s for- mer deputy head of policy and now director of Onward, canvassing support.

The open letter to Mr Brokenshire had claimed that agricultural land typically becomes at least 100 times more valuable when it is granted permission for housing to be built. The groups said more of the uplift in value should be “captured” to provide community benefits. They also called on the Government to “reform the 1961 Land Compensation Act to clarify that local authorities should be able to compulsorily purchase land at fair market value that does not include prospective planning permission”.

Today, the Home Builders Federation, warns in a letter to The Sunday Telegraph that the campaign seeks a “wholesale erosion of private property rights”.