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Lyons - a whisper not a roar!
21 March 2007
The Labour Land Campaign has called upon the Government to reject the Lyons Report on financing local government and instead to introduce annual land value taxation as the fair, economic and efficient replacement for Council Tax and Business Rates.
The Lyons report is bad news for the lost generation of young homeless households needing affordable housing.
It is bad news for young people excluded from the housing market.
It is bad news for the unemployed and workers seeking fair wages.
It is bad news for business and enterprise.
Whilst recognising that inflated land values are created by the whole of society, Lyons dismisses the idea of an annual land value tax but wants to continue with a tax system that penalises producers and rewards idle landowners.
Brian Hodgson, The Chair of the Labour Land Campaign said today “With his timidity, Sir Michael Lyons has missed this opportunity to rectify the damaging local taxes of the past. The UK needed a “Roar” from Lyons; instead all we hear is a “timid whisper”. His report is a failure, a missed opportunity to shift the burden of taxation onto landowners and to replace the unpopular Council Tax.”
The report has at least one very valuable suggestion (Recommendation 8.5) that "the Government should develop proposals for the taxation of derelict property and brownfield land"
The Labour Land Campaign notes that Sir Michael Lyons is outlining the changes that he thinks should be implemented in the short term to address the most urgent problems in the system, but also "with a view to paving the way for greater ambition in future."
We strongly urge the Government to start planning immediately for a future annual Land Value Tax, which could be introduced in four or five years time when the official Land Register could easily have been completed.
Ends
Contact Dave Reed
01604 644743
dbcreed@hotmail.com
Notes for Editors:
The Lyons report acknowledged that "A number of groups, from the Land Value
Taxation Campaign to the British Retail Consortium, supported the idea of a
land value tax."
Crunch time over hoarded land
22nd February 2007
The Labour Land Campaign welcomes the research by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) published today (Thursday 22 February) that shows how much brownfield land is unused in the UK.
The report shows that in London alone landowners waste enough brownfield land for 60,000 new homes!
Landowners always complain that they are hindered by the planning system but the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) recently reported that there is enough land lying unused WITH planning permission to deliver 30,500 houses in London each year until 2016!
The RTPI further reported that in the South East of England there is a six-year supply of land with planning permission.
Meanwhile accusations of land-hoarding are rife in Ireland. In Eire the Minister of the Environment has told suspected land hoarders "Use it or lose it".
Jim Claydon, President of the Royal Town Planning Institute is reported in The Independent (on 17th February 2007) as claiming "All landowners including housebuilders maintain land values by managing supply. It is not in their interests to release large quantities of land because this deflates its value. If we are to build houses at a faster rate we cannot rely on market forces... It will require government intervention".
Such intervention might be the kind of Land Value Tax threatened in Recommendation 8 of Kate Barker's latest report on Land Use Planning.
Carol Wilcox, the Secretary of the Labour Land Campaign has said to land campaigners "the UK needs an Annual Land Value Tax on all land if we are not only going to rid the UK of the scourge of land hoarding but introduce a more just and efficient economy where homes and business premises become more affordable and the whole population shares land wealth that is provided with no cost of production.
Even the landed gentry who support the CPRE might benefit from a Land Value Tax if it gave them a fair (not artificially inflated) price for land near towns, villages and main roads suitable for housing."
Ends
Contact Dave Reed
01604 644743
dbcreed@hotmail.com
Notes for Editors:
The Labour Land Campaign promotes the collection of land rent for public benefit within the socialist/trade union/co-operative movement.
Press release : Complete the land registry!
2nd February 2007
Despite the advent of aerial and satellite survey methods , the ownership of almost 50% of the land in England and Wales is not known by the Land Registry. More was known of land ownership at the time of the Domesday Book (of AD 1086) and the so-called Second Domesday book "The Returns of the Owners of Land" of 1876. The 1876 book can, according to Kevin Cahill, author of "Who Owns Britain?", still be used to work out who owns the nearly 50% of land in England and Wales, mostly estates of the landed gentry, that is unregistered, so little has the regime of Death Duties affected the inheritance of big landed estates.
The Land Registry's Annual Review for 2005/6 states: "Our 10-year Strategic Plan contains six objectives for Land Registry to complete by 2016: No. 3 create a comprehensive Land Register for England and Wales".
But closer investigation by the Labour Land Campaign has revealed that "comprehensive" in the above quote does not mean complete. We invite democrats and those who seek a fair tax system to join our campaign to lobby the Lord Chancellor to fund the Land Registry to publish a complete survey of land ownership in England and Wales preparatory to the introduction of a modernised Land Tax to commemorate Lloyd George's historic People's Budget of 1909, the last time the recovery of land values for the People was attempted.
Ends
Contact Dave Reed
01604 644743
dbcreed@hotmail.com
Notes for Editors:
The Labour Land Campaign promotes, within the socialist/trade union/co-operative movement, the collection of land rent for public benefit.
Press release : Stamp Duty freezes the housing market
24th January 2007
A recent survey* shows that the sale of houses is being slowed down by Stamp Duty with 50% of those surveyed citing this tax as a reason why they cannot move house. So, thousands of people are prevented from moving to more suitable accommodation, taking up jobs in different areas or reducing commuting times. When the housing market fails to function efficiently it is bad for the whole economy.
Point-of-sales taxes on property, like Stamp Duty, always have this effect (as will the proposed Planning Gain Supplement which acts as a disincentive for landowners and developers to build houses in the first place). Housing expert, Professor John Muellbauer of Nuffield College, Oxford has described the Planning Gain Supplement as an 'unwise tax' and a 'step backwards'.
On the other hand, an annual Land Value Tax, as suggested in the House of Commons on 15th January by Dr Vincent Cable, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor, would raise much more revenue, more smoothly, by tapping into the rise in the value of land which, at £150,000 and upwards for a typical family plot, is the real reason why house prices have risen so far beyond ordinary people's reach.
Contact Dave Reed
01604 644743
dbcreed@hotmail.com
Notes for editors:
*This report was conducted by Prime Move.com and announced on 10th January 2007.
The Labour Land Campaign promotes the collection of land rent for public benefit within the socialist/trade union/co-operative movement.
Press release : Barker Review - Final Report
12th December 2006
Whilst not endorsing Kate Barker's proposals to reduce local involvement in planning decisions nor her plans for permitting building on Britain's precious green belts, the Labour Land Campaign does welcome and support her suggestion that land speculators should pay an annual charge on urban sites they keep out of use.
These empty sites not only deny local people homes, jobs, leisure activities and retail opportunities but they encourage vandalism and crime as well as creating the conditions for unnecessary urban sprawl.
Kate Barker's limited land tax on empty sites is a much better proposal than her previous recommendation for a Planning Gain Supplement only on new developments.
We call upon the government to build upon this advice and to introduce a comprehensive Annual Land Value Tax on all land.
Notes for Editors:
For further information please contact Carol Wilcox on 01425 279307 or carol.wilcox@labourland.org
Press release : Housing market set to 'freefall'
18th July 2006
Claims that house prices will soar 50% within six years have been condemned as "highly irresponsible". The prediction came yesterday (Monday 17th July) from the National Housing Federation. It based its demand for more government action on a report it commissioned from Oxford Economic Forecasting.
OEF based its projections on the assumption that interest rates would average 4.5% over six years - taking the average house price to £300,000.
But Fred Harrison, research director of the Land Research Trust, warned that using this forecast would discredit housing policy in Britain.
"Already, the government's housing policies are in a mess. For decades, now, successive governments have failed to secure a sufficient flow of houses at affordable prices. To try and 'lean on' the government with shady forecasts does no-one any good," claimed Harrison.
Last year, the general consensus of forecasters was that house prices had already reached their peak - and some predicted a crash in prices of 20% or more. Harrison warned that these predictions were false, and that the housing market was merely pausing. Now, according to Rightmove, Britain's biggest property website, the annualised rise in house prices has recovered and is exceeding 10%.
Harrison published his forecast of house prices last year in Boom Bust: House Prices, Banking and the Depression of 2010. In this, he analysed 300 years of evidence and concluded that the top of the housing market would be reached at the end of 2007. "That's when the housing market will stall, and go into freefall over the following 18 months. By 2010, Britain will be in recession, and there is no chance of house prices now rising 50% above today's values," said Harrison yesterday (Monday 17th July).
"For the OEF forecast to come true, building societies would have to advance mortgages at multiples of more than 10 times the average salary. That is never going to happen. It is irresponsible of the Housing Federation to use these numbers to blackmail government into a housing strategy that is likely to fail.
"If the agencies concerned with affordability are really worried about the people who need homes, they should get down to some serious research into why Britain has been locked into policies that have consistently failed for the last 200 years. Unfortunately, the Treasury's hope that weakening the planning system will solve the problem is just whistling in the wind."
The source of the problem is to be found in the fact that it is relatively cheap to supply bricks and mortar and the labour to construct houses.(see the £60k house), but it is expensive to find the land to put them on anywhere where there is work, amenities or natural beauty.The solution is to tax land values, so derelict and under-used land (subject to current democraticly determined use) is forced onto the market and the land element in house prices decreases across the board. But the Treasury has no plans to address this issue, preferring to tax workers and business's earnings, even when they are pushed to the limits by high rents, mortgages and property prices. Thus the problem of affordability will still be with us when the economy comes out of the recession in 2012 - when the average house price will probably be below what it is today.
It should be noted that Fred Harrison, uniquely, predicted the timing of the last crash in his 1983 book 'The Power in the Land'.
Notes for Editors:
For further information please contact Carol Wilcox on 01425 279307 or email
carol.wilcox@labourland.org
Fred Harrison can be contacted on 020 8943 3352.