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The following is part of an article in The Times yesterday.
The article relates to South Hams District Council.
A consortium of Bovis Homes, Linden homes, and Taylor Wimpey bought a 1,200 acre greenfield site in the Sherford vally, south Devon with planning permission for 5,500 new homes.
It was designed to prove that Poundbury, the Duchy of Cornwall's model village in Dorset, could work on a larger scale. However, having purchased it, the developers then applied to water down the design code so that they could build cheaper homes more quickly.
Plymouth City Council rejected the new plans but South Hams planning committee voted in favour. The chairman of the planning committee admitted that the developers had put pressure on the committee. 'They didn't say they were going to stop, but they said they couldn't build at the rate we needed them to' he said.
A spokesman for the Prince's Foundation said 'We are in a crisis because housebuilders have got a monopoly. They can turn the tap on and off, and ride roughshod over planning permission'. He also said that the builders threat to complete the homes slowly would have hobbled the councils' attempts to hit their housing targets.
Does all this sound horribly familiar? Surely it is time to act.
A simple solution would be for councils to be allowed to levy council tax on unbuilt houses three years after they receive planning permission. Simple to enforce and a real encouragement for developers not to 'land bank'. Why has the government not done this?