Development viability assessment and the provision of affordable housing. A game of “pass the parcel”?

This paper constructs a hypothetical case study based around the Benchmark Land Value assessments within the landmark Parkhurst Road, London case decided in the High Court in April 2018. It attempts to illustrate how developers were gaming the system and how the 2014 Planning Practice Guidance aided them to do that. The discussion centres on the extent to which new 2018 National Planning Guidance has addressed the identified flaws and what additional changes might be needed to that guidance to solve any outstanding problems

Displaced and vulnerable: A case study of ‘out of area’ housing

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Emerald in Housing, Care and Support on 18/09/2020. The published version can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1108/HCS-05-2020-0005 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version

The taxing problems of land value capture, planning obligations and viability tests: some reasonable models?

Given their increasing importance in the formation and implementation of planning policies in the UK, this paper focuses on the use of development viability tests to determine how land value uplifts actuated by planning consent could be distributed between developers, landowners and the community. Following a discussion of way in which planning obligations act as a quasi-betterment tax that can both capture and create land values, alternative approaches to operationalising Benchmark Land Value (BLV) are evaluated. The effects of different approaches to BLV on potential land value capture are simulated for a number of hypothetical development sites in order to identify and compare implied betterment tax rates and to estimate viable affordable housing proportions. It is concluded that large geographical variations in property prices produce large variations in the potential for land value capture. Different approaches to BLV have a range of strengths and weaknesses. In addition, given that viability models are susceptible to significant levels of error and potential bias, using such models to make and implement planning policies renders such processes vulnerable to opportunistic behaviour and prone to miscalculation

The financialisation of housing land supply in England

The aim of this article is to identify the calculative practices that turn urban development planning into the supply-side of land financialisation. My focus is on the statutory planning of housing supply and the accounting procedures, or market devices, that normalise the practices of land speculation in the earliest stage of the urban development process. I provide an analysis of the accountancy regime used by planning authorities in England to evidence a 5-year supply of housing land. Drawing on the work of Michel Callon on market framing, I assess the activities of economic agents in performing or ‘formatting’ this supply, its boundaries, externalities and rules of operation. I evidence the effect of this formatting in normalising the treatment of land as a financial asset and in orienting the statutory regulation of land supply to the provision of opportunities for the capture of increased ground rent at a cost to the delivery of new homes

Problem-solving for problem-solving: Data analytics to identify families for service intervention

The article draws on Bacchi’s ideas about problematisation (2020) and links to technological solutionism as governing logics of our age, to explore the double-faceted problem-solving logic operating in the UK family policy and early intervention field. Families with certain characteristics are identified as problematic, and local authorities are tasked with intervening to fix that social problem. Local authorities thus need to identify these families for problem-solving intervention, and data analytics companies will solve that problem for them. In the article, we identify discourses of transmitted deprivation and anti-social behaviour in families and the accompanying costly public sector burden as characteristics that produce families as social problems, and discursive themes around delivering powerful knowledge, timeliness and economic efficiently in data analytic companies’ problem solving claims for their data linkage and predictive analytics systems. These discursive rationales undergird the double-faceted problem-solving for problem-solving logic that directs attention away from complex structural causes

Compulsory Purchase and the State Redistribution of Land: A Study of Local Authority-Private Developer Contractual Behaviour

Purpose: The compulsory purchase of land forms the subject of much legal and urban regeneration research. However, there has been little examination of the contractual arrangements between local authorities and private sector property developers that often underpin the compulsory purchase process. This paper examines local authority/private developer contractual behaviour in this context. Design/methodology/approach: An empirical examination of property development contracts made for the “Silver Hill” project in Winchester, a small city in southern England, and the Brent Cross shopping centre extension in north London. Drawing on Macneil’s (1983) relational contract theory, the paper analyses key contract terms and reviews local authority documentation related to the implementation of those terms. Findings: The contracts had two purposes: to provide a development and investment opportunity through the compulsory purchase and redistribution of private land; and to grant the private developers participating in the projects freedom to choose if they wished to take up that opportunity. While the contracts look highly “relational”, the scope for flexibility and reciprocity is both carefully planned and tightly controlled. This exposes an asymmetric power imbalance that emerges in and is rearticulated by this type of contractual arrangement. Originality/value Empirical analysis of contract terms and contractual behaviour provides a rare opportunity to scrutinise the local authority-private developer relationship underpinning both property development practice and compulsory purchase

Who still dies young in a rich city? Revisiting the case of Oxford

There are substantial inequalities in mortality and life expectancy in England, strongly linked to levels of deprivation. Mortality rates among those who are homeless are particularly high. Using the city of Oxford (UK) as a case study, we investigate ward-level premature standardised mortality ratios for several three-year and five-year periods between 2002 and 2016, and explore the extent to which the mortality of people who become homeless contributed to any rise or fall in geographical inequalities during this period. Age–sex standardised mortality ratios (SMRs) for people aged under 65 years old, with and without deaths among the homeless population, were calculated using Office for National Statistics Death Registration data for England and Wales 2002−2016. Individuals who were homeless or vulnerably housed were identified using records supplied by a local Oxford homeless charity. We found that in an increasingly wealthy, and healthy, city there were persistent ward-level inequalities in mortality, which the city-wide decrease in premature mortality over the period masked. Premature deaths among homeless people in Oxford became an increasingly important contributor to the overall geographical inequalities in health in this city. In the ward with the highest SMR, deaths among the homeless population accounted for 73% of all premature deaths of residents over the whole period; in 2014–2016 this proportion rose to 88%. Homelessness among men (the vast majority of the known homeless population) in this gentrifying English city rose to become the key explanation of geographical mortality patterns in deaths before age 65 across the entire city, particularly after 2011. Oxford reflects a broader pattern now found in many places across England of increasing homeless deaths, widening geographical inequalities in life expectancy, and sharp increases in all-age SMRs. The answer to the question, “Who dies young in a rich, and in fact an even richer, place?” is – increasingly – the homeless

The campaign for a National Strategy for Gypsy site provision and the role of Public Health activism in the 1960–1970s

We trace the post-war evolution of a national approach to providing caravan sites for Gypsies and Travellers—something essential to protect the health of that population in the United Kingdom (UK). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the late Norman Dodds MP championed in Parliament the plight of the UK’s Gypsies and other nomads. He was instrumental in galvanising support for the 1968 Caravan Sites Act. The vision of influential individuals working in public and environmental health surmounted practical considerations and local opposition to implement the national programme of site provision envisioned by the Act. We detail this hitherto neglected aspect of Gypsy politics and policy development. In doing so, we highlight the transformative potential of public health and argue for a return to the comprehensive vision motivating these pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s