CPRE take on landbanking campaign

Blog readers will know that 2 years ago the Ruscombe valley was parcelled into house-size plots and sold to over 180 people - see some of the previous landbanking items by clicking here and scrolling down to find links.

Photo: View across to Whiteshill showing a small part of the fields sold to landbankers

The Ruscombe Valley Action Group still meets regularly and wants to ensure this doesn't happen elsewhere - members have been in correspondence with the CPRE and various other national groups. Initially it seemed few were interested in this practice, we have therefore been delighted that CPRE have taken up the campaign - before Christmas they launched a news release plus a report and accompanying articles to national press. If Australia can prevent this activity then we should be able to in this country.

Listen to You and Yours programme on landbanking here.

Here is their release:

LANDBANKERS SELLING RURAL ENGLAND BY THE POUND

Countryside campaigners CPRE [1] today (Friday) launch a campaign against a growing carve up of England’s countryside. It leaves fields and woods at risk of being disfigured and neglected. [2]

Small investors from across the globe are being sold plots of rural land on hundreds of sites across England in order to build homes on them. Their chances of success are very low and their ‘investments’ are likely to fail, because permission to develop cannot be obtained on the great majority of the land.

But that has not stopped more than two dozen separate ‘landbanking’ operations from using glossy advertising and high pressure sales techniques to lure in gullible investors. CPRE fears top economist Kate Barker’s review of planning, commissioned by HM Treasury and published last week, could pour fuel on the flames of small investor landbanking. [3] She called for a major review of Green Belt boundaries across England. Landbanking operators may use this to advertise hundreds more plots on Green Belt land for sale, claiming their protected status may soon be lost following the Barker review.

See our briefing The Great Landbanking Carve Up

CPRE is combining with MPs from all parties to call for the Government to clamp down on the schemes. Greg Mulholland, Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West, has today issued an Early Day Motion supporting our campaign. [4]

CPRE has found nearly 30 operators involved in buying up land in open countryside and subdividing it into small plots, sometimes with stakes and fences. They then market the plots, mostly via the Internet, as having potential for development, with inflated prices to match.

Yet they do not have the necessary authorisation they need, both from planning authorities and the Financial Services Authority, to realise the potential they refer to – and little hope of ever getting it. Many use seductive but highly questionable claims to suck in investors from all over the globe. [5]

CPRE has surveyed the activities of these companies and found some 200 separate sites across England’s countryside are affected. [6] Once subdivided and sold, the sites are at risk of being disfigured or neglected. [7]

The Government has recently proposed a small change in planning law to prevent the landbanking operators from subdividing land into small plots with unsightly fences and posts. CPRE welcomes the proposal, but on its own it will not be enough to tackle the growing problem. [8]

Much more needs to be done across Government. Councils need to be able to remove fences and stakes already in place, and Government urgently needs to use the powers it has in company and property law to curtail the landbanking operations.

Mark Prisk MP (Conservative, Hertford and Stortford) said: ‘It’s high time the Government acted. In Hertfordshire and across the UK, this landbanking is bad for our countryside and even worse for people tempted to speculate.’

Colin Challen MP (Labour, Morley and Rothwell) said: ‘The trend towards speculative landbanking needs to be arrested, and I hope that the collapse recently of a landbanking company will make people think twice about this capricious threat to our Green Belt. At a time when market pressure, as opposed to sound planning policy, appears to be the preferred post-Barker approach to housing supply, we need to carefully consider who would actually benefit. Landbanking should be discouraged – it is speculation against the countryside.’

Greg Mulholland MP said: ‘Ordinary people are being ripped off and at the same time landbanking scams are causing real distress to many local communities who are worried that important local sites, including in Green Belt land, will be built on. It is time the Government tackled this, to stop people being conned and to protect Green Belt land for future generations to enjoy.’

Paul Miner, CPRE’s Planning Campaigner, said: ‘In Australia they have clear laws to stop this practice and are using them. [9] We shouldn’t have to tolerate it here either. The Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Trade and Industry, the Financial Services Authority and the Office of Fair Trading need to work together and stamp it out completely.’ [10]