Myth Busting on Housing Supply - Мит пући због стамбене понуде

Yet another bit of fun and games from the development sector, oh it's so difficult for them in the times of global recession.

The UK Government has been very keen to inform us how inefficient local authorities are and how their planning bureaucracy has made life oh so difficult for developers.

In the press this week we learnt that actually local authorities have been progressing planning applications for housing, but the developers have then not developed the land!!

Behind this is quite a naughty game developers are playing with our greenbelts.

We are constantly told by political parties who are lobbied by the developers that there is a shortage of housing supply so we MUST build more. Government have as a consequence of this mis-information deregulated the planning process to the point of a rubber stamp exercise as the presumption to develop now holds sway. Thus more applications are expected from the development sector and some are developed, the rest are 'land banked' as assets, because the local authority rubber stamp places a real financial premium on that land. While the land is banked it is locked from other (perhaps better uses) and becomes under-utilised, neglected and unmanaged. Nevertheless the development companies still have a piece of land to develop or sell on with inflated prices. Land becomes an over-inflated asset for the company shareholders to speculate on. This artificially high value is also viewed as an asset by accountants thereby enabling developers to look in better business shape than they are. Land values in the accounting systems should be valued on their present state (ie underused/derelict) rather than on the speculative value of land holding development hope-value.

The land remains locked, feeding the myth that land supply is too low for the alleged housing needs of the country, the more scarce land becomes the higher value it has and this in turn perpetuates the myth that there is not enough land to build on. This then leads developers to say land supply is short and it's all the local authorities fault while they sit on hectares of land creating a future enhanced value for their shareholders.

Ludicrous. All housing applications should be put on immediate hold while Government assesses the extent of land banking by development companies.

 

Highly technical MS Visio flow chart of what the rascals are up to.

How will you feel when the developer comes to a green belt like yours and says it is our moral duty (see previous blogs) to allow housing to ruin our green inheritance? How much will it annoy you that when they will rail road through their planning application with scant regard for local choice and democracy that they then sit on the land for 10 years as a grossly inflated asset, blighting the land but speculating on its falsified hope-value?

Not so good I suspect.

By the way, in my blog Localism and the Developer (below) the council voted through the proposals that were so vehemently opposed by local people. The local paper even held a vote and 82% voted against the proposals, yet the council approved the proposal, even having the impertinence and arrogance to say that they saw the papers poll as unrepresentative! They probably saw the march as unrepresentative too and all those objection letters. Councillors failed their duty to serve the people who voted them in to power. Developers continue to own local democracy, not you or I. It is most vexatious!