LONDON PROPERTY SUMMIT: Planning minister Nick Boles has dismissed suggestions that housebuilders are guilty of speculative landbanking.
Speaking at Thursday’s London Property Summit in Westminster, Boles said that London was living through a “golden age”, but one that risked being blighted by a housing crisis.
“It is certainly one of the main obsessions of our mayor [Boris Johnson] and of this government,” he told the conference.
But the minister said that forcing housebuilders to bring forward developments on existing landbanks was not the answer.
Housebuilders currently hold land that could deliver around 40,000 homes, a number dwarfed by housing demand.
“We need to build 250,000 units a year,” he said. “There is absolutely no evidence of speculative landbanking.”
And he insisted that Help to Buy – as well as planning reform and the expansion of permitted development rights – would help solve the problem.
“I understand Help to Buy has been controversial but what none of its critics have been able to explain to me is what the alternative is.”
“It was a key part of a package of measures designed to deal with housing need – you liberalise the supply side and you support demand by making it easier for people to afford the finances to buy.
“It is an appropriate and proportionate intervention in a failed financial system. It is only that way we will pull through permissions for new housing. Support for the demand side is the best way to make a reformed supply-side respond.”
Boles condemned Labour’s promise of intervention. “It is simply irresponsible to suggest we will increase the supply of housing by introducing tighter planning controls,” he said. “The direction we should head in is less planning control, less bureaucratic intervention and less political intervention.”
damian.wild@estatesgazette.com
