From (rather surprisingly) The Telegraph:
A housebuilding business founded by Philip Hammond has been accused of sitting on an undeveloped plot of land which has been granted planning permission for four new homes.
Castlemead Limited, which was co-founded by the Chancellor in 1984, builds new homes and doctor’s surgeries. It has been reported that Castlemead Group, which is majority-owned by the company, was granted permission to build four homes in north Wales in June 2010 on the condition work on the site would begin within five years...
The revelation comes after Mr Hammond gave an interview with The Sunday Times this week, in which he hit out at house builders who are sitting on hundreds of thousands of undeveloped plots of land which have planning permission for new homes...
A spokeswoman for Mr Hammond said: “Any shares in Castlemead are held in a trust. The chancellor has no direct influence or involvement and so is unable to comment.”
Nothing subtle about it
1 hour ago
8 comments:
Given that he resigned as a director in 2005, where is the problem?
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/02985505/officers
G, what difference does that make? Mr H indirectly owns (part of)the land, and his policies can influence the eventual selling price. In any event he is a 'shadow director', "somebody on whose behalf we can expect the actual directors of the company to act" etc or where the actual directors do what they expect the shadow director would have done.
Really?
If you feel so strongly, why not start a law suit against this blatant misuse of trust laws?
Apparently some of David Cameron's best friends made their money converting agricultural land to land with planning permission. Can't blame them really: if government makes it fiendishly difficult to get planning permission, then the price of land with planning permission shoots up, which in turn makes it worth devoting a huge amount of effort to getting planning permission.
"if government makes it fiendishly difficult to get planning permission,then the price of land with planning permission shoots up,"
If the buyers of land with PP are prepared to give £XM/acre (the current price of land with PP of fiendishly difficult provenance), then why should the sellers accept any less if PP was easier to get?
It may be a bit counter-intuitive, but the truth is that the value of land with PP is the value of that piece of land. If it doesn't have PP on it, its value is reduced, because its utility is reduced. How easy or otherwise it is to remove that restriction has no effect on the value of the land on which that restriction is placed. Think of it like a tap on the end of the pipe. The maximum flow of water you can get out of the pipe is when you turn the tap fully on, or even take it off the pipe altogether. Having the tap there just restricts the supply, it can't make it more than the maximum, simply because you want more water.
G, the legal system is there to channel money to lawyers. Best avoided.
B, agreed. Or you can see the green belt as a weir in a river. The value inside the land is higher than just outside. If the green belt laws were loosened, the total value would be the same, but the increase from cheap to expensive would be more gradual.
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