Here is a motion to propose at your local Constituency Labour Party (CLP) to help give the report more weight in the run up to the Party conference in September.
Please let us know if you are going to propose it via contact@landforthemany.uk
Conference notes:
- Land ownership in the UK is astonishingly unequal, with land values rising dramatically from around £1trn in 1995 to over £5trn today
- A major factor behind this inflation is the treatment of land and housing as financial assets and vehicles for tax avoidance
- Our planning system and speculative development model is failing to deliver for local needs
- Affordable housing and access to land for farming and recreation is out of reach for a growing number of people, with disastrous social consequences.
Conference calls for the following proposals, from the Land for the Many report, to be included in Labour’s manifesto:
A commitment to stabilising nominal house prices
All information about land ownership, control, subsidies and planning should be published as open data.
Introduce:
A Community Right to Buy based on the Scottish model.
Compulsory Sale Orders, granting public authorities the power to require derelict land to be sold by public auction.
A Right to Roam across all uncultivated land and water, excluding gardens.
A Community Participation Agency to ensure people have a say in planning.
In support of Labour’s ambitious social house building programme:
Establish New Public Development Corporations with power to purchase land at closer to current use value, and develop it in the public interest
End the fire sale of public land.
Strengthen the rights of private tenants and overhaul property taxation to discourage the use of land and housing as financial assets and/or as vehicles for tax avoidance