ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 first describes the way the Labour government of 1945 laid the foundations of a post-war settlement on land reform as part of a ‘mixed economy’, but this did not include the financial provisions of the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, which sought to introduce a betterment levy on development values and ensure that land was acquired by the state at non-inflated prices. The chapter briefly describes policy developments in agriculture, smallholdings, new towns and national parks. Second, it traces the direction of policy from the election of the Conservatives in 1951 up to their defeat by Labour in 1964. During this time there was a return to a free market in the sale of land for development purposes. Its return helped create the circumstances for an unprecedented boom in land and property prices during the late 1950s and early 1960s. While the cause of land reform dropped down the political agenda during the 1950s, the public controversy over property speculators revived interest in taxing development land as a way of returning the unearned increment to the community rather than as windfall profits to the developers.
