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'Land Swap Levy' to Fund Rural Affordable Housing ?

Posted: 21/02/2005

Alan Whitehead, MP for Southampton West, is calling for a ‘land swap levy’ to fund rural affordable housing. The principle of the ‘land swap levy’ takes an element of ‘hope value’ from the uplift in value gained from a change of land use in rural areas and sets it to work on the development of long term affordable rural housing. It is explained in the latest TCPA Tomorrow Series discussion paper: ‘Putting land to work: the role of a ‘land-swap levy’
 
"Most of the indicators that conspire to place pressure on housing across the country – increasing age, greater formulation of single person households, increasing land costs relative to the buildings on them – are magnified in rural areas by the immobility of the population, the distances between settlements, and the planning restrictions which increasingly seek to defend the green fields of the countryside against incursion from the growth of the town", explains TCPA Policy Council member Dr Whitehead.

“The paper starts from the premise that a levy on land at the point of granting planning permission is an appropriate way of delivering affordable housing, not as a sum of money but as a portion of the land that is proposed for development”, he continues. “In order to achieve planning permission, a landowner would be required to find and purchase parcels of land totalling the same acreage as the levied land (20% of the total development size, for example) in his proposed development within the urban footprint of communities in the region in which his land sits”.

“This land could then be retained by an appropriate body, such as a Community Land Trust, to provide low price land in perpetuity” A land swap levy would serve both as a decentralising force in housing as well as a highly targeted method of addressing the rural housing crisis. It is a ‘tax’ that is relatively simple to collect, transparent, has low administrative costs and will benefit most rural communities over time without recourse to existing resources. Such a levy would also compliment the recent government policy of making NHS land available for affordable housing while retaining the ownership of that land in the public sector, ensuring that the properties built upon it always remain affordable even after they have been sold through schemes such as the ‘right to buy’.

The discussion paper can be ordered from the TCPA at a cost of £7.50 (free to TCPA members) by calling 020 7930 8903.
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