Perhaps a few questions would illuminate:
How should any increase in the value of land be treated?
Futures Forum: Economics @ Transition Exeter: A land value tax
Futures Forum: Why is housing so expensive? ... and what could Land Value Taxation contribute? Meeting in Exeter: Wednesday 25th February
How arbitrary are politically-decided changes in value?
Futures Forum: Knowle relocation project: expropriation & eminent domain >>> "The principle that there is a public realm of common citizenship and essential public goods and space which ought not to be appropriated for private benefit."
How is the status of land determined - and to whose advantage?
Futures Forum: What motivates nimbyism? Who benefits from land-use classification?
How far does the public benefit from any change in status?
Futures Forum: "The planning system is badly broken and communities are being left to pick up the mess."
To what extent are the public offered sweeteners - otherwise known as S106 money?
Futures Forum: 'Planning gain' - the replacement for S106 cash from developers - the Community Infrastructure Levy - but is it still 'bribery' by a different name?
This letter in the WMN was spotted by the East Devon Watch blog:
Lobbying is still a dark art
| Posted: November 18, 2015
Your leading article on November 13 concerned the Countryside Land and Business Association and its new president Ross Murray, and it makes the outrageous claim that “in politics today lobbying ministers has gone from a dark art to a legitimate and indeed vital part of our democratic process.”
Surely the opposite is the case, lobbying ministers is still a dark art which is anti-democratic and potentially corrupting. It occurs behind closed doors so how can anyone assess its legitimacy?
It is hard to see how democratic principles apply to landowning in England and Wales where 33,000 CLA members own half the land. At a local level landowners have far more power than any elected representative, and their power is without any democratic accountability.
It is good to know that Mr Murray is concerned about the need for affordable rural homes (also WMN Nov 13). A major factor in the high cost of houses is the high cost of the land due to speculation and the way in which land value shoots up as soon as its use changes, through the planning system, from agricultural to residential, enabling landowners to gain hefty unearned profits. Profits that under a fairer system should revert to the community whose needs and activities serve to create the land’s value.
If Mr Murray could persuade his members to this view he would help solve the rural housing crisis. If not then Winston Churchill’s view will remain as true today as when he stated it over a century ago:
“Land monopoly is not the only monopoly but it is by far the greatest of the monopolies – it is a perpetual monopoly and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly.”
WMN Letters: Lobbying is still a dark art | Western Morning News
Lobbying: dark art or vital part of democratic process? | East Devon Watch
Surely the opposite is the case, lobbying ministers is still a dark art which is anti-democratic and potentially corrupting. It occurs behind closed doors so how can anyone assess its legitimacy?
It is hard to see how democratic principles apply to landowning in England and Wales where 33,000 CLA members own half the land. At a local level landowners have far more power than any elected representative, and their power is without any democratic accountability.
It is good to know that Mr Murray is concerned about the need for affordable rural homes (also WMN Nov 13). A major factor in the high cost of houses is the high cost of the land due to speculation and the way in which land value shoots up as soon as its use changes, through the planning system, from agricultural to residential, enabling landowners to gain hefty unearned profits. Profits that under a fairer system should revert to the community whose needs and activities serve to create the land’s value.
If Mr Murray could persuade his members to this view he would help solve the rural housing crisis. If not then Winston Churchill’s view will remain as true today as when he stated it over a century ago:
“Land monopoly is not the only monopoly but it is by far the greatest of the monopolies – it is a perpetual monopoly and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly.”
WMN Letters: Lobbying is still a dark art | Western Morning News
Lobbying: dark art or vital part of democratic process? | East Devon Watch
It is clear that members of the East Devon Business Forum benefitted from a change in land-use:
'If I turn a green field into an estate then I’m not doing it for peanuts' - Telegraph
Investigative journalist Anna Minton produced this report in 2013:
III. ‘The local mafia’
Conflicts of interest in East Devon
“The further out of London you get, the more like the Wild West it is. If you do rock the boat, the clique make your life a bloody misery.” So says Charlie Hopkins, a solicitor acting for objectors to a development in East Devon.
East Devon District Council has
been the subject of on-going controversy
over contentious planning decisions and
allegations of conflicts of interest which date
back more than 20 years.
The current controversy centres around a
group called the East Devon Business
Forum (EDBF), which is perceived to have
significant influence over how much land is
developed in the area. xlvii The members of
the Forum are largely landowner/developers
in the district who are actively pursuing
major development, either to their industrial
estates or applications for large-scale
housing schemes.
The Forum is chaired by Graham Brown,
who runs his own planning consultancy,
Grey Green Planning Ltd, and a building
company, Brown’s Builders. Brown was a
local councillor until he was suspended by
the Conservative Party following a recent
undercover investigation by the Daily
Telegraph during which he boasted: “If I
can’t get planning nobody will.” xlviii Brown
also held other positions with influence over
planning matters as chair of East Devon
District Council’s (EDDC) Local
Development Framework, which is the
development plan for the borough. The
Forum’s Vice Chair is Roy Stuart, who is a
local landowner.
Stuart and Brown have a history. In 1990
Stuart, then Conservative Vice Chairman of
the Council’s planning committee, was
forced to resign as a councillor after
planning permission was given for
development on his own land. Fellow
councillor Brown resigned in sympathy,
forcing a by-election. Both stood again as
Conservative candidates, but only Brown
was re-elected, narrowly. xlix
Such is the anger of residents and
independent councillors at EDBF l and the
influence it has had on development in East
Devon, that in November 2012 a protest
march at Sidmouth, on the Local Plan’s
development proposals, drew over 4,000
people. Many people there were carrying
placards with slogans relating to EDBF.
One of these contentious planning
applications centres on proposals to build
450 homes and a retail centre on a site
owned by Roy Stuart at West Clyst, Pinhoe,
east of Exeter. The site is Grade 1
agricultural land which, according to council
policy, should be protected from
development. But despite this and despite
the huge number of objections the
Conservative-led council approved the
application to build on it. li
Objector Paul Newman said local residents
felt it was a pre-judged decision. “East
Devon District Council claimed they wanted
to protect Grade 1 agricultural land, but this development was approved ahead of the
Local Development Framework [borough
plan]. We thought it was a pre-judged
decision because they asked for the
application to be brought forward.” Local
residents allege that secret (minuted)
discussions with developers where heard
while the plan was being drawn up, with at
least two developers encouraged to bring
forward early major planning applications
on sites. This raised concerns over whether
the planning decisions were effectively ‘prejudged’, and raised questions over whether
there were conflicts of interest present. lii
Newman also echoed Nina Edge’s
observation that consultations by the
council were often timetabled for the
holiday period in order to purposely
undermine residents’ objections. “Major consultations are always started over
the holiday period. You don’t get long
enough to construct a reasoned response –
it’s a matter of days. It’s standard practice to
release any consultation over Christmas or
in August,” he said.
A planning row at Axminster, also in East
Devon, has followed a similar trajectory
with barrister Charlie Hopkins alleging that
land has been allocated for housing contrary
to East Devon’s own planning policies.
“When the Local Development Framework
was in its very early stages, the panel was
effectively inviting developers to present
proposals to them way ahead of allocations
for the site. That was the case with
Axminster. Local Development Framework
meetings at that time were held behind
closed doors and did not release any
minutes, but it emerged later from the minutes (which were initially withheld under
the FOI Act, but eventually obtained under
the Environmental Regulations Act), that
East Devon was encouraging the
application. Even though the site was
contrary to development plan the council
recommended approval,”
Hopkins
explained, liii echoing the experience in West
Clyst.
Hopkins is the solicitor acting for the
Axminster objectors who have decided to
take the decision to the Court of Appeal.
But he says that even if the decision is
quashed, East Devon will be able to contest
it. “Now it is in the new local plan. East
Devon decided post facto to allocate land
for housing. They have effectively
undermined their own policies,” he said.
Hopkins, like Adrian Glasspool at the
Heygate, believes decisions like this are
driven by the enormous land values for sites
with planning permission, explaining that
agricultural land is worth between £5-6,000
per acre but, with planning permission, its
value rockets to half a million pounds per
acre. “Local planning authorities encourage
pre-planning application conversations with
developers. The further out of London you
get the more like the Wild West it is. It’s
groups of local landowners, local gentry and
local farmers. If they’re not local politicians
their sons are. It’s not unique – it’s how it
works at the local level. In urban,
metropolitan areas there are a different set
of actors at play. In rural areas it’s very
much to do with ties to the land and
connections with local politicians,” he said.
The struggles at Axminster and West Clyst
are just two of the development battles that
communities claim reflect real failures in
local democracy in East Devon. In another
case, which was reported to the Local
Government Ombudsman, Liberal
Democrat councillor Geoff Chamberlain,
with colleagues, Derek Button and Steve
Wragg, resigned in protest at what was
perceived to be underhand pressure on
councillors to influence decisions. A
planning application was refused after it was
felt that a councillor had a vested interest
and was trying to influence the decision.
The application was put in again, and at that
meeting another councillor was overheard
saying: “I wish to god I was an independent
because I wouldn’t be told how to vote.” liv
Summarising his views on the council’s
democratic processes, a councillor who did
not want to be named said: “We have a
cabal. Half a dozen names come to mind.
They work together on these things. I regard
them as the local mafia.” lv
Scaring the Living Daylights out of people - Anna Minton
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Scaring the Living Daylights out of people - Anna Minton
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