How Labour can achieve its target of 1.5m new homes

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Regarding your article on the greenfield land needed to meet Labour’s promise of 1.5m homes in its first term (Labour’s housing plans will use land twice size of Milton Keynes, expert says, 8 July), it is common knowledge that 70% of the value of the average home is the value of the site. The government should urgently legislate to pre-empt the profiteering of speculators who are no doubt scanning the country in search of agricultural land close to highways or rail networks, in the expectation of making a killing with an uplift in value by as much as 275% through consent for change of use. Labour should emulate the Attlee government, which passed the New Towns Acts in 1946, obliging landowners to sell to the state at existing-use value. The act set up development corporations that oversaw the planning, design and construction of the new towns, with in-house teams of professionals, ensuring jobs and infrastructure for their populations. This will not be achieved by handing sites to volume housebuilders, who will continue to resist providing social homes at any scale as their primary objective is to maximise returns for their shareholders. The quality of their homes has led to a record 33% of buyers reporting more than 15 basic defects this year. Kate Macintosh Winchester Re your article (Four ways Labour could deliver on pledge to build 1.5m new homes, 8 July), there is a fifth way: the opportunity to build on top of existing buildings, referred to in Europe as the Optoppen movement. The real estate consultant Knight Frank suggests that there is scope to build 41,000 rooftop homes in central London, and, according to joint research by the engineering firm WSP and University College London, there is capacity to build 630,000 new homes on top of London’s municipal buildings. In the Netherlands, the ministry of internal affairs estimates that by 2030, about 66,000 additional homes could be added by topping up multifamily housing built in 1965 or later, as these are structurally suitable. In Spain, research on the Eixample area of Barcelona shows that about 2,500 buildings could accommodate vertical extensions. Such an approach has the green bonus of avoiding demolition. But the key is to use timber as the primary structural material, as its relative lightness enables several storeys to be added rather than one or two if concrete and/or steel were used. In addition, timber has a lower carbon footprint than concrete and steel. Paul Brannen Former MEP and author of Timber! How Wood Can Help Save the World from Climate Breakdown Ray Corbett ((Letters, 9 July) urges a return to the system whereby the uplift in land values from planning permission was shared between landowners and local councils. Labour should go further. Land values are not created by landowners; they reflect the public demand for different locations, further enhanced by the provision of publicly funded infrastructure and by planning decisions taken in the public name. They are publicly generated values and should belong in the public purse. Rather than one-off payments when planning permission is granted, we need an ongoing system of land value taxation, charged annually and based on optimum permitted use. Hoarding would then be a financial burden and the incentive would be to release surplus land, especially where demand is high. Crucially, it would provide a huge source of public revenue. Those who claim to own the country would be responsible for its running costs. This is the route Labour should be taking. John Digney Buchlyvie, Stirling