Give local builders a chance to buy land

ON November 7, you reported that Monmouthshire county council was selling 10 acres of prime building land at Rockfield farm Undy, Newport. The land has planning permission for 144 units 36 of which are to be affordable housing.

I am totally against large parcels of public land being sold. This parcel of land in Undy will cost millions of pounds to purchase. Only large corporates or hedge funds can afford such a capital outlay. Small local builders are effectively being denied the chance to buy public land. Corporates often land bank or resell the land for profit. If they ever do build anything, they tend to use labour from outside the local community or they build prefab houses manufactured off site in another town or country. Small local builders don’t land bank, they use local labour and reinvest profits back into the local community and the quality of their build tends to be much higher because they use local tradesmen they trust.

Many corporate developers have been involved in the latest leasehold scandals that have left people with homes they cannot sell.

Corporates make promises in land sale contracts that they will build affordable homes or make some other investment in the local community. Often these promises are not held, corporates use viability studies to get out of these contractual agreements.

Public land should be broken up into plots, basic infrastructure installed then these plots should be sold individually to give our small local builders a chance of purchasing building land. What is this love affair our elected leaders have with corporates? Why do they continually deny small Welsh businesses opportunity? Has nothing been learned by the RIFW land scandal? Paul Fear Magor, Newport