ABSTRACT
Chapter 9 reviews changes in the structure of landownership after 1979. It outlines the land policies of Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997, identifying those policies such as privatisation, deregulation and financialisation, and ‘Right to Buy’, which contributed to the spread and then decline of owner-occupation, but which also led to the current housing crisis. It subsequently outlines the record of Labour governments from 1997 to 2010, comparing the various measures they proposed to influence the way land could be made more available for housing (planning gain, Section 106 agreements, Community Infrastructure Levy) to their previous attempts to recover the ‘unearned increment’. The chapter then reviews developments after 2010 and the current options for land reform in the context of the financial crash of 2008 and the challenge to neoliberalism. It reviews the viability of taxation of land values and other mainstream policies such as planning gain or tax reforms to control property speculation and to address the housing crisis. Finally, it asks whether more radical approaches are needed, such as community land trusts and ‘The Right to the City’ and other radical ‘occupy’ movements, which may or may not represent a serious challenge to the triumph of private property in the future.
