There is a general consensus that land should be “right priced”. Where it is viable the costs of providing both hard and social infrastructure needed to support development should be established and thoroughly tested so that they can be reflected in land values. The local plan and CIL examination and inquiry processes are an essential, if not perfect, basis for setting a viability benchmark.
Right pricing land will, however, often lead to values below landowners’ existing aspirations. Necessarily, it removes some hope value and reduces market value. It has been pointed out that this loss of expected value will lead to some landowners to hold back on their land, potentially starving the development market of a staple need. They will continue to ask for unadjusted values and that will cause problems since developers will not be able to pay those prices and still deliver policy compliant schemes.
One answer to this is that the CPO process can be used to buy land, at a price that reflects adopted planning policy and any CIL and realigns land value expectations. Quite rightly critics have observed that it is impossible to compulsorily acquire all the land required for 300,000 homes a year. There is no capacity within local authorities (or within housebuilders to be fair) to support such an effort. While that is true CPO powers do not need to be used to acquire all development land, just enough to make it clear that inflated expectations of site value should not stand in the way of housing delivery.
If the local plan and CIL processes work properly, and are held to account by those affected, there should still be a healthy margin, or incentive, for landowners to sell their land. The initial landowners affected would be rather like the unfortunate Admiral Byng, being subject to the judicious use of CPO powers “pour encourager les autres”.
