Tax landowners in land ... for self build

[james armstrong]

Perhaps most of land earmarked for building houses in UK is stashed in the landbanks of the  big builders -Taylor Wimpey, Barratts etc. 
Yes,  release land for allotments but also it can be argued for building self build houses too.

The way is to tax landowners in land - this has the same justification as section 106 agreements where builders in return for Plg permission build a percentage as social houses or  pay a 'fine'

An alternative is to offer them incentives to release land- reward them by designating selected sites as new towns or new villages  or new hamlets or new housing clusters around farmyards homesteads etc. A refinement is to re-instate the  hundreds of disused rail lines  closed by Beeching (there are some fifty miles near Dorchester) site clusters of self build houses (otherwise known as traditional english  villages).
 
Clustering is already policy.  The reopened  former rail lines should be restyled as dedicated roads and cycle tracks served by flexible buses only.. (avoiding car ownership and  congestion)
Then  allotments can be adjacent to houses.
This system will create a speed up of  the exodous from cities which is already uinderweigh. I see it as unavoidable.

Yes there is room in the countryside.`It is deserted! There are  hardly more people in rural are4as than there were in 1801 during the first census. Perhaps five per cent of land has disappeared under conurbations of which UK has, luckily, more than France.
As the  Thames tide rises Thamesmead, and  Hackney will be underwater so it's coming.

Of course we will need to slaughter some 1 million useless ponies releasing one million pony paddock acres.` and then there are the 1 million agricultural acres which were till recently set aside. Then there are the six metre fierlde margins to re-utilise, then ....  There is no connection between feeding the  hungry world and building low ipact dwellings in the english  countryside. That scare is part of the  NFU, CLBA, National Council of Mortgage Lenders propaganda to justify the contrived scarcity of housing and  consequent high house prices, land price spiral. Whitehall is not clued up.` Barker overlooking the biggest provider of new houses-all 16,000 of  them  self built proves that.
Yes, sqeeze the landowners for land for allotments and self build houses.
Bribe them, tax them or hit them with a CPO - all legal, We dont shout loud enough. 

James