News: December 2010 Archives

Jeremy Edge, principal of Edge Planning & Development, will be the first speaker of 2011 - on Thursday 3rd February at 6pm - for PLRG's series of stimulating evening lectures on aspects of land value capture. As usual, the talk will be given at London South Bank University (Borough Rd entrance) and is free to members of PLRG (subscription £20 per year, can be paid on the night).

Jeremy was until earlier this year Partner and Head of Planning at Knight Frank and is now helping Volterra Consulting analyse the impact of taxation on the property industry for RICS. Prior to that, he was Director of Research for ATIS Weatherall - in 2000, he was instrumental in associating that firm with the Progressive Forum, an initiative of the Henry George Foundation at the time PLRG Hon Sec Dr Tony Vickers was Chief Executive of HGF.

Please contact Tony if you plan on coming to this talk.

PLRG was given a fascinating insight into the black hole of past UK housing policy by Stephen Hill, Director of Future Planners, at its last meeting on 24th November.

 Hill summed up the reason at the start of his talk: "Politicians of all parties genuinely want to do 'good' but do not understand the deep structural inequalities that arise from a flawed land market". He went on to quote (among others) JK Galbriath (1992) on "the visible larceny of commercial banks" in the area of lending for speculative property investment, as a major cause of this inequality; the Zacceus Trust (2005) in its "Memo to the PM on Unaffordable Housing" (Blair dismiised it) - and the current Housing Minister, Grant Shapps: "The housing market should be boring and predictable" (if only!)

The talk was rich with research and statistics and Hill has kindly allowed his slides to be made available to all, from the PLRG/Landvaluescape site.

See 2010 11 PRLG Land and Housing Markets sh 241110.ppt