Author Archives: Joshan Parmar

We are living through an acute housing shortage unprecedented in British history. The severe lack of homes drives house prices and rents, and there seems to be no end in sight. At its heart, the reason is simple: we haven’t built enough homes for decades. The Liberal Democrats should be at the forefront of this debate, leading the charge for a localist and progressive housing policy that delivers the homes we need to see. Community Land Auctions were originally proposed with Ed Davey in 2007 and promise just this.

Currently, communities that say yes to development near them get very little out of it. Existing mechanisms like Section 106 are insufficient to outweigh the significant disruption and impact of larger schemes, meaning that locals see all of the downsides as landowners walk off with huge value uplifts. Agricultural land given planning permission for homes can see its value jump by over 100x, almost all of which goes to the owner and middlemen. Community Land Auctions would capture this gain for local authorities, allowing them to spend it on vital local services, new green infrastructure or whatever other priorities are most important for their area.

Community Land Auctions use an innovative new process to make this work. First, a council invites sealed bids from landowners, who indicate which land they would be willing to sell and for how much. The council then evaluates these bids, deciding which land is most suited for development, how many homes should be allowed and other key aspects of the planning permission. They then auction the permissioned site or sites to developers, who then build it out. Landowners are incentivised to offer low prices for their land to win their auction, whilst developers are pushed into high bids to secure the right to develop. This maximises the income to the council and ensures that they capture the vast majority of the planning uplift.