CPOs and the potential to make a profit on them

[NotATrainspott]

Moderator note - split from:

Fife Rail Electrification/Decarbonisation

This thread will be dedicated to the later phases of the ongoing Fife Circle Electrification project, and certain aspects around it. I’d like to ask an initial question. The B9130 road which goes over a cobble bridge at Markinch station is FAR too low to support any means of electric wires or...

www.railforums.co.uk

Yes, that is true. But given that the railway doesn't, generally speaking, own the land that those houses would be built on, nor do they run the plumbing company it sounds like you are just asking for Network Rail to get more money from central government. I'm not opposed to that, but the NHS, education, the MoD, etc. might have something to say about that.

No, NR should have the power to buy land at current value. It does whatever it wants to make the railway work better, then it gets to sell it on with planning permission for whatever it likes. Buy land for £10m, spend £10m on station upgrades and then sell it on for £20m+. The upgrades mean the railway works better and doesn't cost the taxpayer anything but it also means the land is worth more to developers.

Let's say at Steventon that NR decided to (re)build a new station as part of a four-tracking and bridge installation. The land around it would go from being worth about as much as any other rural/village land that's 5km from a GWML station, to being worth a hell of a lot more. The land is worth more because people want to be able to live a short walk from a GWML station that would have good services to London and other places. These services are only possible if we upgrade the railway. There's no option today of just building a station (with the OHLE clearance requirements it imposes) on the two track bottleneck and having a meaningful number of services call there.

This redevelopment + land value uplift combination is the main factor in why some public transport improvements have been able to get built, and others have languished for decades. The effects are felt strongest in London, where developers know that their land needs to be on the Tube map for it to be worth their effort. All sorts of schemes have been built in recent decades, like the DLR, the Jubilee Line Extension, Crossrail, the Northern Line extension and the Barking Riverside branch. All of them have depended on (re)development potential.

If we don't apply the same principle across the network then we'll never be able to afford upgrades. And the fundamental question is why we would be bothering to upgrade if we're not trying to generate development as well. E.g. what's the point of electrifying the Fife Circle and delivering the sparks effect if we're not going to get more passengers on the railway as a result? The Victorians built railways in order to connect up people and resources to deliver more growth. They'd find this idea of an in-place upgrade with no redevelopment opportunity to be completely mad, even before modern construction prices are applied.

 

[najaB]

No, NR should have the power to buy land at current value. It does whatever it wants to make the railway work better, then it gets to sell it on with planning permission for whatever it likes. Buy land for £10m, spend £10m on station upgrades and then sell it on for £20m+. The upgrades mean the railway works better and doesn't cost the taxpayer anything but it also means the land is worth more to developers.

Let's say at Steventon that NR decided to (re)build a new station as part of a four-tracking and bridge installation. The land around it would go from being worth about as much as any other rural/village land that's 5km from a GWML station, to being worth a hell of a lot more. The land is worth more because people want to be able to live a short walk from a GWML station that would have good services to London and other places. These services are only possible if we upgrade the railway. There's no option today of just building a station (with the OHLE clearance requirements it imposes) on the two track bottleneck and having a meaningful number of services call there.

So NR would be using compulsory purchase powers to speculate on land. I can see that going over well.

 

[NotATrainspott]

So NR would be using compulsory purchase powers to speculate on land. I can see that going over well.

The alternative is that not-NR is able to buy land and speculate on it instead, waiting for NR to finally do the upgrade. So either the upgrade never happens, or it does but the wider taxpayer has to pay instead while landowners get to benefit despite not having done anything to justify it.

This is all pretty well understood economic theory with Georgism etc. It seems that transport infrastructure operators are probably the best way to (re)introduce this sort of thinking to the UK. In the case of Steventon, there's a pretty easily understood causal chain between NR buying the land, improving the railway as well as local infrastructure, then being financially no worse off as a result. It's pretty hard to introduce a new tax in the abstract but explaining that NR is developing in order to sort out some bridges and allow a new station to (re)open is pretty easy. Yes, the immediate locals aren't always happy about CPO but getting a new station/improved bridge etc would suit quite a lot of locals here.

The infrastructure will be around for a very long time and the fundamentals aren't going to disappear. People want to be able to get to London because that's where there's lots of jobs and other fun things to do. NR has spent a lot of taxpayers money on electrifying and upgrading the GWML and by redeveloping along the line, it helps to make some of that investment back. Electrifying the railway is the core reason why a new station alongside other development at Steventon may be viable given the performance improvements of electric trains vs diesel.

 

[najaB]

The alternative is that not-NR is able to buy land and speculate on it instead, waiting for NR to finally do the upgrade. So either the upgrade never happens, or it does but the wider taxpayer has to pay instead while landowners get to benefit despite not having done anything to justify it.

Compulsory purchase powers are already viewed with some suspicion. I think you have underestimated the politics of using CPOs to then sell the land on at a profit.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Compulsory purchase powers are already viewed with some suspicion. I think you have underestimated the politics of using CPOs to then sell the land on at a profit.

The politics of CPO here are far less interesting than the politics of public spending when there's no money left. NR is just the state and the state has to "make a profit" to be viable. The state, through NR, making £10m from land development along railway lines is perfectly valid as a strategy to raise revenue. The alternative of raising taxes or cutting spending by £10m is no better economically or politically.

 

[najaB]

The state, through NR, making £10m from land development along railway lines is perfectly valid as a strategy to raise revenue. The alternative of raising taxes or cutting spending by £10m is no better economically or politically.

I agree that there's nothing wrong with NR selling assets for a profit. The problem is when they acquire those assets by adverse possession from the previous owners, who might rightly feel that the government (by way of NR) has overstepped the "needs of the many outweigh the rights of the one" argument behind compulsory purchase.

 

[Bald Rick]

The law is clear.

An authority looking to compulsorily acquire land for a development, once it has the CPO powers, acquires the land at the market rate in a ’no development’ world, ie the price it was if the development was not to happen. Plus disturbance costs etc.

But, the acquiring authority needs to demonstrate that it needs the land for the development itself. It can’t, say, have a CPO for a new flyover but include in the CPO 100 acres next door for a load of houses.

Bear in mind that the CPO acquiring powers are usually conferred as part of the same procees as the primary consent for the development.

 

[squingo44]

We need more ways of achieving compulsory purchase, and we need to give the railways more power to speculate on the land they acquire. If they bought land they might use in future when it went on sale, then the whole problem would be solved before it started - the railway would already own the land.

Since the railways are going to be publicly owned, any profit-driven behaviour will be for the public good. The railway making more money from its non-railway operations would simply be used subsidise operation of the railways.

 

[SynthD]

This redevelopment + land value uplift combination is the main factor in why some public transport improvements have been able to get built, and others have languished for decades. The effects are felt strongest in London, where developers know that their land needs to be on the Tube map for it to be worth their effort. All sorts of schemes have been built in recent decades, like the DLR, the Jubilee Line Extension, Crossrail, the Northern Line extension and the Barking Riverside branch. All of them have depended on (re)development potential.

Those schemes have various ways private money reached funding public projects. The most relevant one is Crossrail's Community Infrastructure Levy. I'm curious how that could be used by rural local government in your Steventon example.

Community Infrastructure Levy

This guidance explains what the Community Infrastructure Levy is and how it operates.

www.gov.uk

The levy applies to nearly all development in the given area, that article goes into detail not relevant here. It doesn't give much definition of what the area is, just that the local government set it.

 

[NCT]

What’s the legality of CPOs for the purpose of state corporatism?

 

[Magdalia]

Here in the Fens the government is proposing to establish a Greater Cambridge Development Corporation, see here:

Greater Cambridge Development Corporation: Analysis of consultation responses and next steps

www.gov.uk

Consultation outcome

Greater Cambridge Development Corporation: Analysis of consultation responses and next steps​

The proposal includes compulsory purchase powers as follows:

Land acquisition and disposal powers will be granted to the Development Corporation from the outset. This includes the power to acquire land by agreement or compulsory purchase orders, vest land from public bodies, assemble fragmented sites, remediate contaminated areas, and dispose of land to facilitate development. This strategy will underpin the Development Corporation’s ability to both finance and deliver nationally significant growth.

The government recognises that land assembly challenges have historically delayed delivery of strategically important sites. The Development Corporation will therefore have access to compulsory purchase powers to be used proportionately and where necessary. Compulsory acquisition would be considered where efforts to acquire land by agreement has failed and there is a compelling case in the public interest for use of a compulsory purchase power. The Development Corporation’s default approach will be collaboration and partnership, working with landowners and developers to achieve outcomes that deliver upon local and national priorities.

One particularly interesting feature of this proposal is here:

Although the Development Corporation will predominantly focus on its designated development area, it will also have influence beyond its formal boundary, providing it is in keeping with its objective to regenerate the area within the boundary. This includes the ability to acquire land (including compulsorily) outside its development area to enable it to discharge its functions within its boundary.

NR should have the power to buy land at current value. It does whatever it wants to make the railway work better, then it gets to sell it on with planning permission for whatever it likes. Buy land for £10m, spend £10m on station upgrades and then sell it on for £20m+. The upgrades mean the railway works better and doesn't cost the taxpayer anything but it also means the land is worth more to developers.

I'm not a planner or a lawyer, but my interpretation is that the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation's powers would enable it to do something like this.

Oxford is also likely to get a development corporation, and depending on how it is established, it might be able to do what is described here for Steventon. I'd expect the New Town Development Corporations to have similar powers.

 

[35B]

We need more ways of achieving compulsory purchase, and we need to give the railways more power to speculate on the land they acquire. If they bought land they might use in future when it went on sale, then the whole problem would be solved before it started - the railway would already own the land.

Since the railways are going to be publicly owned, any profit-driven behaviour will be for the public good. The railway making more money from its non-railway operations would simply be used subsidise operation of the railways.

Your definition of the public good is extremely dubious. The concession allowing CPOs is deliberately very limited to protect the rights of us as individuals. We might think that it would be good for the railway, but it would be used for other purposes and potentially much less benign ones.

The abuse of those rights has brought ministers down - see Crichel Down for an example.

 

[Bald Rick]

We need more ways of achieving compulsory purchase, and we need to give the railways more power to speculate on the land they acquire.

Since the railways are going to be publicly owned, any profit-driven behaviour will be for the public good. The railway making more money from its non-railway operations would simply be used subsidise operation of the railways.

Just the railways?

Why not National Highways? The NHS? Education authorities? Local Aithority care providers?

Who decides who should take precedence?

 

[NotATrainspott]

Just the railways?

Why not National Highways? The NHS? Education authorities? Local Aithority care providers?

Who decides who should take precedence?

My proposed use of CPO is really just a roundabout way of achieving the same end result of land value taxation. If you tax all land based on its value if cleared of all improvements (i.e. after being bulldozed) then you get to model all of these uplift effects even without redevelopment. This would be your funding for all other public service improvements: better schools mean higher land values in the catchment area. We don't have any of the bureaucratic or public legitimacy infrastructure in place for that yet but we do for specific infrastructure projects, with a somewhat coherent engineering and economic argument you can present on the doorstep.

E.g. in many places with level crossings the only solution is to build a bridge over the railway, but that means the buildings near the level crossing will be basically ruined. You don't want the view out of your front window to be a concrete viaduct a few metres away. The town as a whole clearly benefits from getting rid of the level crossing, as does the railway. If you bulldoze the land and replace it with a taller building, you can end up with something perfectly coherent. The ground floor can be used for parking garages/basements and the new first floor can be at bridge deck level.

A very specific case here is at Abbey Wood, where the main road was put on a viaduct to cross the railway. Crossrail rebuilt the station so that it now has a proper frontage onto the viaduct road, which is also wider. However, next to the station you have small two storey terraced properties which are now completely dominated by the viaduct. If you're walking on the viaduct pavement you can look down into the gardens and into the back windows of all of these properties. Is this ideal? No. And it's absurd when at the next station along the line, the exact same Elizabeth line service justifies the towers at Woolwich.

The business case for Crossrail was that it would enable lots of new housing. Without a business case, the Treasury would have never funded it. Why shouldn't we CPO the crappy two storey houses next to Abbey Wood station, which are already clearly ruined by local infrastructure, and redevelop for profit to help pay for Crossrail?

Redevelopment means that engineering gets easier. If you're able to redevelop the land then you have more freedom when constructing. If HS2 could redevelop Park Village East then it could have decided to just close the road and demolish it to increase the land available for working below. Then, using the same contractors and supplies of concrete, steel and machinery as are needed for the railway, it could have reinstated a more suitable development deck. We task engineers with coming up with creative solutions that minimise costs and maximise benefits, but we have artificially increased the cost of just buying up more land and redeveloping it later.

 

[SynthD]

The business case for Crossrail was that it would enable lots of new housing. Without a business case, the Treasury would have never funded it. Why shouldn't we CPO the crappy two storey houses next to Abbey Wood station

The business case was for private development on land bought in the market. The Treasury only became involved in this off railway site, passively and after the fact, by the levy in my previous comment. Getting involved earlier and demolishing homes people didn’t want to sell is a larger step than you might think. There is such a strong apparent preference for CPO to target commercial property that I expect it’s explicit policy.

but we have artificially increased the cost of just buying up more land and redeveloping it later.

Not we, but the ancient concept of land ownership.

 

[squingo44]

Just the railways?

Why not National Highways? The NHS? Education authorities? Local Aithority care providers?

Who decides who should take precedence?

Because railways have a much clearer and sharper relationship with the value of land near where they build and operate. Historically, the success of railway companies hinged on their ability to acquire, develop, and manage the land surrounding their operations so that they could cross-subsidise an unprofitable business.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 13 Jun 2026 ==

The business case was for private development on land bought in the market. The Treasury only became involved in this off railway site, passively and after the fact, by the levy in my previous comment. Getting involved earlier and demolishing homes people didn’t want to sell is a larger step than you might think. There is such a strong apparent preference for CPO to target commercial property that I expect it’s explicit policy.

Not we, but the ancient concept of land ownership.

This is what should change. We should make it much easier for the railway to simply buy land - there are a myriad of ways in which it would benefit their operations, especially around large construction sites.

Other countries also have the ancient concept of land ownership, but they balance it against the public interest. Many countries, when building railways, would give the organisation building the railway the right to compulsorily purchase the land around the railway at a width of up to several km, to give them them freedom in routing the railways and constructing them. Not all countries forced the railways to sell the land afterwards! Those that didn’t allowed the rent from the accumulated land to subsidise the railway operations.

I understand that it’s a touchy subject, and people care a lot about the places they live. That’s why commercial development is - rightly - preferred for new railway developments. But the level of difficulty we find in taking over any residential land at all next to the railways is absurd! It should be possible to take a main line and widen it - at the expense of residential land on either side, but compensated by new stations and new higher density (and higher value) housing redevelopment.

It’s seriously holding us back, because it’s cutting off the simplest way to improve our railway capacity - we rely on tunnels where instead we could demolish to build on the surface, if only we could move the needle on what’s expected.

 

[NotATrainspott]

Not we, but the ancient concept of land ownership.

We're not talking about expropriation here. CPO means you're getting the full market price + reasonable disruption costs of moving etc, so you are made whole. Land ownership rights are critical for people to be comfortable investing in things like building a house or a factory. If people were worried that the state would come and take their land away for £0 or £10, then they wouldn't spend £1m building something there in the first place.

That said, it's not a right to demand that the state pays whatever you feel like for your land. You may have just spent £1m building the biggest, fanciest home in the village but if the actual market value is only £500k then the state will give you £500k + costs. The state wanting to CPO is just one of many reasons you might have to sell up unexpectedly. If you're daft enough to spend more money on something than it is ever going to be worth, then that's your fault.

The specific nuance involved in this proposal though is that the state needs the power to buy the land at what it's currently worth, and not what it would be worth once the state is done. Those two storey terraces might individually only be worth £500k each (urgh, London prices) but in principle they would be worth a lot more as a result of development opportunity. The demolition costs for the site would be pretty small, but the combined land would be worth maybe 2x more as a development plot for a new 20 storey tower.

The people who own £500k worth of terraced house might be terribly upset that they won't get £1m for it instead. However, the £1m is only possible because of the state investment in the railway. If the state CPOed at £1m, then there'd be no profit to be made in upgrading the railway, so it would never happen. For society as a whole, the optimum solution is to buy at £500k and use the £500k profit to pay for the upgrade. The current owner of the property doesn't lose out anything but the speculative value they had never created in the first place.

This is clearest in greenfield housing developments. We know what land is worth for agricultural purposes. A plot of land that might be worth £10k if it can only be used to graze sheep ends up being worth £1m if you get planning approval to build houses on it. The farmer did not create the £1m worth of value. Indeed, the farmer actually working the land may not get any of it, if they are a tenant or contractor. You could be the laziest, worst farmer or landowner in the world and you'd get the £1m value regardless. How carefully you farmed the land is irrelevant when it's going to be razed and have houses built on top.

The argument that the landowner deserves the £1m regardless doesn't actually make any sense for the state. If that argument holds, then it undermines most arguments about why we have taxation and the state in the first place. The £1m valuation can only exist because the state has in all other areas around the country found a way of preventing the landowner from capturing all of that value. The only way for the landowner to justify collecting that value is if they generate all of that value themselves, and to do that requires building out more and more of the capacity of the state. That is, the ability to enforce rules on your land through a practical monopoly of violence legitimised by the efficient provision of public services to the people living and working on your land. Soldiers only fight for you because you're paying them with money and public services like health and education. The only way to escape from land value obligations is to become a state yourself, at which point the very last thing you want is for some of the people on your land to start claiming these rights for themselves! The state is the land and the land is the state.

 

[Bald Rick]

Because railways have a much clearer and sharper relationship with the value of land near where they build and operate.

Do they? How are land values in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordhire post HS2, compared to post M40?

 

[Dr Hoo]

Would @squingo44 be kind enough to clarify how The State, in the form of the SRA and DfT increased the value of land in the Norton Bridge area by first summarily closing the station and then covering the area with flyovers and diverted local roads?

Thanks

 

[NotATrainspott]

Would @squingo44 be kind enough to clarify how The State, in the form of the SRA and DfT increased the value of land in the Norton Bridge area by first summarily closing the station and then covering the area with flyovers and diverted local roads?

Thanks

Well they improved land values elsewhere by more than they reduced them in Norton Bridge. It's urban areas which benefit the most from long distance rail upgrades but these urban areas are what generate most of the value add in the entire country. Making Manchester and London a bit more valuable more than outweighs the damage caused along the route.

If a rural area is used for farming, then a motorway or high speed railway doesn't really cause any harm. Farms are already noisy, dirty workplaces. The roads and railways just blend into the background and become yet another landmark that divides up the landscape. As a farmer, you benefit when the cities get wealthier and so they can afford to buy your produce at higher prices.

If an area is just picturesque then yes, a railway might do some harm. But aesthetic appeal only has economic impact if someone is able and willing to pay to see it. Deeply scenic rural areas are, in a way, the norm around the world. They are only valuable because there are people who live and work in cities who will use some of their money to go and visit them. So, making them wealthier means that picturesque rural areas become more valuable. If the value created exceeds the damage then we still win in the end.

And, of course, the inability of the WCML to provide local stopping services is largely accidental. With HS2, it should be possible to run more local services which could serve and cause huge improvements to areas like Norton Bridge. Bypasses that might ruin the scenery around a village may also be necessary to make the village centre desirable again, by removing all the noisy through traffic.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

Taxing the uplift in land values as a result of development was tried previously. It didn't work. Community Infrastructure Levy heads down that same route. Compulsory Purchase is a very specific process. As is being discussed regarding HS2 abandonment, if they don't build what they said they were going to build (justifying the rather strong power of taking someone’s property off them, like it or not), then they have to return it (by statute) to the previous owners in the state is was previously. Hence it's cheaper to carry on building HS2 than stop and remove all the bridges/embankments and re-fill all the tunnels/cuttings!

Compulsory Purchase is not entirely like the HS2 Bill but I look forward to attending a public inquiry where a DfT / Network Rail / East West type body proposes compulsory acquiring 1,000 acres of agricultural with just 100 required for the railway. Er, please explain to the inquiry why you require those 900 acres.

Development Corporations may be 'given' Compulsory Purchase powers but they still have to go through the same process. It is not an open season to simply write a letter saying I'm having those fields, thanks and goodbye.

In the past, railways often got incentivised with vast tracts of land (and mineral rights etc) alongside the route to persuade the promoters to build railways (in Africa and USA for example), but that was land the government had ownership of* rather than privately owned land.

*Native peoples may disagree on the point regarding ownership!

 

[NotATrainspott]

Taxing the uplift in land values as a result of development was tried previously. It didn't work. Community Infrastructure Levy heads down that same route. Compulsory Purchase is a very specific process. As is being discussed regarding HS2 abandonment, if they don't build what they said they were going to build (justifying the rather strong power of taking someone’s property off them, like it or not), then they have to return it (by statute) to the previous owners in the state is was previously. Hence it's cheaper to carry on building HS2 than stop and remove all the bridges/embankments and re-fill all the tunnels/cuttings!

Compulsory Purchase is not entirely like the HS2 Bill but I look forward to attending a public inquiry where a DfT / Network Rail / East West type body proposes compulsory acquiring 1,000 acres of agricultural with just 100 required for the railway. Er, please explain to the inquiry why you require those 900 acres.

Development Corporations may be 'given' Compulsory Purchase powers but they still have to go through the same process. It is not an open season to simply write a letter saying I'm having those fields, thanks and goodbye.

In the past, railways often got incentivised with vast tracts of land (and mineral rights etc) alongside the route to persuade the promoters to build railways (in Africa and USA for example), but that was land the government had ownership of* rather than privately owned land.

*Native peoples may disagree on the point regarding ownership!

The statute is the problem, essentially. The government has created a set of rules which makes it particularly hard for the government to actually deliver infrastructure and other public services. The solution to most problems the government faces is to change the rules so that they are less incoherent. It's like the way that any change to the status quo has to go through various levels of scrutiny while the status quo gets to survive just fine. If we applied our planning rules to all existing developments it would demonstrate that very little of the world we know would have been allowed to be built today, regardless of how useful it is. E.g. how the extreme difficulty of airport expansion means no airport would ever be allowed to be built today from scratch. A bias to the status quo is fine up until the point when you need a change, and then it all falls apart. We've seen councils complain about EV fast charging stations not being in-keeping with the local environment even though they're across the road from an even uglier, even more environmentally destructive petrol station.

The thing about all this CPO is that it's about the government having the ability to profit from the land, and use landowner powers to e.g. just evict on demand. If the state did CPO those 1000 acres then in principle it could just allow existing farming and even residential use to continue unchanged. But, if the engineers come up with a solution that requires some building to be demolished, then it can just happen without any more public enquiry. E.g. if you lived near a major rail upgrade and the state took out proactive CPO, then you could remain a tenant but could be on a short eviction period if it turns out that your house needs to be demolished to make the rail scheme happen. Short term changes of plan happen all the time, like unmapped services appearing only once you dig down, or ground conditions proving to be more difficult than expected.

If you're a manager of e.g. a distribution centre, your job is to be able to come up with solutions to problems to keep the show on the road. E.g. if the toilets fail and can't be fixed for days, then phone up a rental company and have temporary ones installed in the car park within a few hours. It's just mad that we spend billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on projects without giving engineers and managers on the ground a similar level of autonomy. I mean, if you live close enough to a project for there to be any real likelihood your house will need to be demolished to make it happen on time, then it may well be best to just move you elsewhere for the duration so that you aren't affected by noise and vibration.

People might want certainty but we have to put a pricetag on this. Would you rather have high taxes and low public services, but be able to string out some bureaucracy for a few months before the state does what it wants to do anyway? Most of the problems we have are ultimately down to things which we solve by developing more. E.g. a family who resists a CPO because their child is at a local school and there's no other housing available within the catchment area/reasonable travel distance. The problem there is not the CPO. The problem is the shortage of suitable available housing! That can't be solved without bulldozing some houses and/or fields to build more of it. On that note, a pre-requisite for a major CPO and demolition may be another round of CPO and demolition to provide replacement homes or businesses in a reasonable place. If the right place for the railway tunnel ventilation shaft is in the middle of a school, then it may be necessary to CPO enough houses next door to build a replacement school that doesn't require everyone to change their daily routines. The more extra housing and other "surplus" buildings we have, the easier it is to accommodate short-notice change without disruption. Our housing vacancy rate of ~3% is far too low and our society would work far better if 1 in 10 houses everywhere, on every street, of every accommodation type, were just sitting empty or under-utilised most of the time.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

The statute is the problem, essentially. The government has created a set of rules which makes it particularly hard for the government to actually deliver infrastructure and other public services. The solution to most problems the government faces is to change the rules so that they are less incoherent. It's like the way that any change to the status quo has to go through various levels of scrutiny while the status quo gets to survive just fine. If we applied our planning rules to all existing developments it would demonstrate that very little of the world we know would have been allowed to be built today, regardless of how useful it is. E.g. how the extreme difficulty of airport expansion means no airport would ever be allowed to be built today from scratch. A bias to the status quo is fine up until the point when you need a change, and then it all falls apart. We've seen councils complain about EV fast charging stations not being in-keeping with the local environment even though they're across the road from an even uglier, even more environmentally destructive petrol station.

The thing about all this CPO is that it's about the government having the ability to profit from the land, and use landowner powers to e.g. just evict on demand. If the state did CPO those 1000 acres then in principle it could just allow existing farming and even residential use to continue unchanged. But, if the engineers come up with a solution that requires some building to be demolished, then it can just happen without any more public enquiry. E.g. if you lived near a major rail upgrade and the state took out proactive CPO, then you could remain a tenant but could be on a short eviction period if it turns out that your house needs to be demolished to make the rail scheme happen. Short term changes of plan happen all the time, like unmapped services appearing only once you dig down, or ground conditions proving to be more difficult than expected.

If you're a manager of e.g. a distribution centre, your job is to be able to come up with solutions to problems to keep the show on the road. E.g. if the toilets fail and can't be fixed for days, then phone up a rental company and have temporary ones installed in the car park within a few hours. It's just mad that we spend billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on projects without giving engineers and managers on the ground a similar level of autonomy. I mean, if you live close enough to a project for there to be any real likelihood your house will need to be demolished to make it happen on time, then it may well be best to just move you elsewhere for the duration so that you aren't affected by noise and vibration.

People might want certainty but we have to put a pricetag on this. Would you rather have high taxes and low public services, but be able to string out some bureaucracy for a few months before the state does what it wants to do anyway? Most of the problems we have are ultimately down to things which we solve by developing more. E.g. a family who resists a CPO because their child is at a local school and there's no other housing available within the catchment area/reasonable travel distance. The problem there is not the CPO. The problem is the shortage of suitable available housing! That can't be solved without bulldozing some houses and/or fields to build more of it. On that note, a pre-requisite for a major CPO and demolition may be another round of CPO and demolition to provide replacement homes or businesses in a reasonable place. If the right place for the railway tunnel ventilation shaft is in the middle of a school, then it may be necessary to CPO enough houses next door to build a replacement school that doesn't require everyone to change their daily routines. The more extra housing and other "surplus" buildings we have, the easier it is to accommodate short-notice change without disruption. Our housing vacancy rate of ~3% is far too low and our society would work far better if 1 in 10 houses everywhere, on every street, of every accommodation type, were just sitting empty or under-utilised most of the time.

What you seem to be arguing is:
NotaTrainspott down the road doesn't have a large flat screen TV, Bob up the road does have a large flat screen TV (perhaps two). I, the state, as some kind of societal arbitrator have decided that you can have Bob's TV. Just like that. No discussion, no consultation, and throw him 50p as compensation. Like it or lump it.

Now turn that around and lose, with minimal compensation, something you hold precious.

Such behaviours existed in eastern Europe after The Revolution. People didn't like it, eventually those regimes got overturned. Such behaviour does still exist in some parts of the world. There is not a rush of immigration to those countries. Small boats to North Korea, can't recall hearing of many.

Like it or not we do live in a property owning democracy. Those property owners have rights which have evolved over our 1,000 or whatever years of parliamentary democracy. The state also has rights to interfere with those individual rights. That is the Compulsory Purchase process (or hybrid bill or whatever). The rights of individuals are then set against the wider needs of society. The reality is that the dice are already heavily loaded in favour of the state. For example, during the motorway building programme in the 1960's and 1970's, the strategic policy of building roads was what you agreed at the the general election, even if you didn't realise it at the time amongst the multitude of other manifesto commitments, or agreed with some manifesto commitments but not others and had to make a King Solomon judgement about which party to vote for. The subsequent public inquiries were limited to 'red route, yellow route or blue route' not whether the road should be built at all. That is still the case and the government (current and previous) have been steadily strengthening their hand to encourage / force through their new pet project of supposed national importance. Or bribe people to have a high-voltage power line or nuclear repositry next door.

Think very carefully indeed before you hand Sir Humphrey vast powers to 'just get on with it'. It might come back and bite you on the bum. Clearly the best place for nuclear power stations is where the electricity is used, so Regents Park it is then, solved, just get building.

Compulsory Purchase is not a particularly difficult process (detailed, yes). It is not necessarily a lengthy process (several stages, yes). If you have a strong case and line up your ducks it can be run through quite efficiently. The delays come when someone doesn't have a well prepared case or keeps changing their case or third parties such as the parliamentary or legal system just aren't bothered about processing the Order in a timely manner. On this forum, look no further than the Altnabreac cases to see how long things can drag out even though the individual steps are at most a few hours for each hearing, only a few days when totalled and only a few weeks to allow for efficient preparation, reading, issuing of judgment.

 

[NotATrainspott]

What you seem to be arguing is:
NotaTrainspott down the road doesn't have a large flat screen TV, Bob up the road does have a large flat screen TV (perhaps two). I, the state, as some kind of societal arbitrator have decided that you can have Bob's TV. Just like that. No discussion, no consultation, and throw him 50p as compensation. Like it or lump it.

Now turn that around and lose, with minimal compensation, something you hold precious.

Such behaviours existed in eastern Europe after The Revolution. People didn't like it, eventually those regimes got overturned. Such behaviour does still exist in some parts of the world. There is not a rush of immigration to those countries. Small boats to North Korea, can't recall hearing of many.

Like it or not we do live in a property owning democracy. Those property owners have rights which have evolved over our 1,000 or whatever years of parliamentary democracy. The state also has rights to interfere with those individual rights. That is the Compulsory Purchase process (or hybrid bill or whatever). The rights of individuals are then set against the wider needs of society. The reality is that the dice are already heavily loaded in favour of the state. For example, during the motorway building programme in the 1960's and 1970's, the strategic policy of building roads was what you agreed at the the general election, even if you didn't realise it at the time amongst the multitude of other manifesto commitments, or agreed with some manifesto commitments but not others and had to make a King Solomon judgement about which party to vote for. The subsequent public inquiries were limited to 'red route, yellow route or blue route' not whether the road should be built at all. That is still the case and the government (current and previous) have been steadily strengthening their hand to encourage / force through their new pet project of supposed national importance. Or bribe people to have a high-voltage power line or nuclear repositry next door.

Think very carefully indeed before you hand Sir Humphrey vast powers to 'just get on with it'. It might come back and bite you on the bum. Clearly the best place for nuclear power stations is where the electricity is used, so Regents Park it is then, solved, just get building.

Compulsory Purchase is not a particularly difficult process (detailed, yes). It is not necessarily a lengthy process (several stages, yes). If you have a strong case and line up your ducks it can be run through quite efficiently. The delays come when someone doesn't have a well prepared case or keeps changing their case or third parties such as the parliamentary or legal system just aren't bothered about processing the Order in a timely manner. On this forum, look no further than the Altnabreac cases to see how long things can drag out even though the individual steps are at most a few hours for each hearing, only a few days when totalled and only a few weeks to allow for efficient preparation, reading, issuing of judgment.

Land is not like other assets because it is immovable and you did not create it. That television had to be designed and built for it to exist. Even somewhere like the Netherlands or Singapore where there is significant land reclamation, all that is happening is that land which is below the water line is being moved above the water line. The amount of land on earth is absolutely fixed and we cannot increase or decrease it no matter what we do, short of planetary reconstruction.

It is not about providing minimal compensation. It is about providing fair compensation based on the value you could have reasonably planned around. If you own the land under a farm (i.e. not necessarily the person actually doing the farming), then it is not reasonable that you are paid £1m for land you bought for £10k simply because it became viable to build a house on it. You may be extremely upset that you don't get a windfall of £1m but that is irrelevant. If you bought the land for £10k on the assumption that some day it'd magically be worth £1m regardless of any effort you put into it, then that's pure asset speculation and is economically and socially destructive. All of that £1m value comes from other people actually working and investing, so to get their money for nothing means breaking normal economic incentives. We want people to invest £10k in company stocks and shares, or in bank deposits which can be lent out again to people who need to borrow, rather than buying land and hoping it just becomes more valuable. The more that people just invest in land, the less we get real productivity improvements like new companies and factories. Investing in property by actually upgrading or building things isn't a problem, although some component of it normally is land value speculation as well.

It's all fine and well saying that we shouldn't give the government wide-ranging powers to deliver things according to their manifesto commitments, but then you cannot turn around and be surprised that none of the manifest commitments end up being done. If the electorate votes for a party that promises to build 1 million new houses in 5 years then it doesn't make a vast amount of sense to spend the next 15 years in planning meetings about where only 100k of those houses should be built.

Completely and seriously unironically I believe that we should build nuclear power stations in what appear to be utterly comical locations. I genuinely and sincerely believe that we should build a nuclear power station on the southern edge of Slough, literally on the playing fields of Eton and next door to Windsor Castle. Nothing less than comically bold statements of intent and confidence, as well as enforced elite stakeholder alignment for the next several centuries, will make it possible for us to roll out nuclear power at scale in this country. We can tart up the plants with some traditional stone and castle details so that they don't stand out too much. Given the lifespan and security requirements of a nuclear plants, designing it literally like a castle keep would make a lot of sense.

The reason is pretty simple. Aviation and similar forms of organised transport are safe because the rich and powerful use them the most. When a plane crashes it almost always involves a representative sample of powerful people on board. Even a Ryanair flight to Zante is full of everyday voters who actually matter in UK politics. There is no political constituency that accepts the possibility of death and destruction on passenger aircraft and so everything is pretty perfectly aligned to make them safe. Boeing have had a torrid time because there is no billionaire media conglomerate owner or shareholder who is happy that their BBJ might fall out of the sky some day with them onboard.

But a chemical plant explosion in a third world country? No one cares. And that's a real concern when we put nuclear plants in areas which we traditionally consider suitable. As in, places where only poor and politically irrelevant people live. Like Hartlepool, or Heysham, or Hunterston. If there's a radiation leak then no one really cares and it might help to sterilise the locals and cut the long term welfare bill, remember. People who live in the Home Counties can safely make decisions about nuclear plant safety margins or general political horse-trading without thinking of the consequences to themselves. But if the exact same plant is also next door to their old public school (and I pretty much would ensure that every traditional public school had a nuclear plant near it) and Oxbridge college (it's not unreasonable to have research + power generation reactors near our key science hubs) then that line of thinking no longer holds. And if you're making the plants safe enough for the rich and powerful, then as with aviation the standards mean that everyone ends up with the same level of safety.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

Land is not like other assets because it is immovable and you did not create it. That television had to be designed and built for it to exist. Even somewhere like the Netherlands or Singapore where there is significant land reclamation, all that is happening is that land which is below the water line is being moved above the water line. The amount of land on earth is absolutely fixed and we cannot increase or decrease it no matter what we do, short of planetary reconstruction.

It is not about providing minimal compensation. It is about providing fair compensation based on the value you could have reasonably planned around. If you own the land under a farm (i.e. not necessarily the person actually doing the farming), then it is not reasonable that you are paid £1m for land you bought for £10k simply because it became viable to build a house on it. You may be extremely upset that you don't get a windfall of £1m but that is irrelevant. If you bought the land for £10k on the assumption that some day it'd magically be worth £1m regardless of any effort you put into it, then that's pure asset speculation and is economically and socially destructive. All of that £1m value comes from other people actually working and investing, so to get their money for nothing means breaking normal economic incentives. We want people to invest £10k in company stocks and shares, or in bank deposits which can be lent out again to people who need to borrow, rather than buying land and hoping it just becomes more valuable. The more that people just invest in land, the less we get real productivity improvements like new companies and factories. Investing in property by actually upgrading or building things isn't a problem, although some component of it normally is land value speculation as well.

It's all fine and well saying that we shouldn't give the government wide-ranging powers to deliver things according to their manifesto commitments, but then you cannot turn around and be surprised that none of the manifest commitments end up being done. If the electorate votes for a party that promises to build 1 million new houses in 5 years then it doesn't make a vast amount of sense to spend the next 15 years in planning meetings about where only 100k of those houses should be built.

Completely and seriously unironically I believe that we should build nuclear power stations in what appear to be utterly comical locations. I genuinely and sincerely believe that we should build a nuclear power station on the southern edge of Slough, literally on the playing fields of Eton and next door to Windsor Castle. Nothing less than comically bold statements of intent and confidence, as well as enforced elite stakeholder alignment for the next several centuries, will make it possible for us to roll out nuclear power at scale in this country. We can tart up the plants with some traditional stone and castle details so that they don't stand out too much. Given the lifespan and security requirements of a nuclear plants, designing it literally like a castle keep would make a lot of sense.

The reason is pretty simple. Aviation and similar forms of organised transport are safe because the rich and powerful use them the most. When a plane crashes it almost always involves a representative sample of powerful people on board. Even a Ryanair flight to Zante is full of everyday voters who actually matter in UK politics. There is no political constituency that accepts the possibility of death and destruction on passenger aircraft and so everything is pretty perfectly aligned to make them safe. Boeing have had a torrid time because there is no billionaire media conglomerate owner or shareholder who is happy that their BBJ might fall out of the sky some day with them onboard.

But a chemical plant explosion in a third world country? No one cares. And that's a real concern when we put nuclear plants in areas which we traditionally consider suitable. As in, places where only poor and politically irrelevant people live. Like Hartlepool, or Heysham, or Hunterston. If there's a radiation leak then no one really cares and it might help to sterilise the locals and cut the long term welfare bill, remember. People who live in the Home Counties can safely make decisions about nuclear plant safety margins or general political horse-trading without thinking of the consequences to themselves. But if the exact same plant is also next door to their old public school (and I pretty much would ensure that every traditional public school had a nuclear plant near it) and Oxbridge college (it's not unreasonable to have research + power generation reactors near our key science hubs) then that line of thinking no longer holds. And if you're making the plants safe enough for the rich and powerful, then as with aviation the standards mean that everyone ends up with the same level of safety.

Society has decided that land ownership, with some value speculators in the mix, is acceptable/desirable. Society has decided that some kind of totalitarian state with powers to just do whatever whenever however is not acceptable. I'm happy with that status quo, along with most of the other 8 billion people on the planet not forming a queue to move to North Korea.

As Chernobyl showed, where you build a nuclear power station is pretty much irrelevant. If it goes bang, everyone gets a dose, just lessens as the distance increases. Do they still randomly test welsh lamb?

 

[JamesT]

If the railway can just buy anything nearby, doesn’t that effectively blight all of those properties forever?
As we’ve seen from HS2 where properties along the path lose value and become unsellable, even if eventually it’s decided they’re not required? Hence the government having to put in compensation schemes for property owners.
Wouldn’t that become the state for any property near the railway if there’s the risk at any moment it could be CPO’d?

 

[35B]

Society has decided that land ownership, with some value speculators in the mix, is acceptable/desirable. Society has decided that some kind of totalitarian state with powers to just do whatever whenever however is not acceptable. I'm happy with that status quo, along with most of the other 8 billion people on the planet not forming a queue to move to North Korea.

As Chernobyl showed, where you build a nuclear power station is pretty much irrelevant. If it goes bang, everyone gets a dose, just lessens as the distance increases. Do they still randomly test welsh lamb?

Well said

Perhaps if politicians showed a little more intent to deliver on their promises, and organised themselves, these might be less of an issue.

As for the element of class war* in these proposals from @NotATrainspott , I'll just note that some of the worst policy abuses of the urban working class have come at the hands of their own supporters and advocates. There are issues around things like land value, and how the increase in value for development is captured; my own view is that CPOs don't necessarily do this fairly because they don't address the opportunity cost to a landholder of being deprived of their land and then being unable to reinstate it, especially where it is a productive asset (including farmland) if the CPO is reversed at cost. These are complex equations that require a balance to be struck, which granting sweeping powers to a government to just do as it will completely omit.

If politicians and promoters did a better job advocating for their schemes, they'd gain more support. Elsewhere in the planning process, there are definitely places where it can and should be streamlined, and outcomes made significantly more definite - HS2 demonstrates just how poor the processes are, irrespective of what we may think of the project itself.

* - I'll declare an interest. I'm privately educated (not public school), my parents were public school educated and I have ancestry that could be classified as ruling elite. I am staunchly middle class and those advantages have barely percolated through.

 

[Baxenden Bank]

Well said

Perhaps if politicians showed a little more intent to deliver on their promises, and organised themselves, these might be less of an issue.

As for the element of class war* in these proposals from @NotATrainspott , I'll just note that some of the worst policy abuses of the urban working class have come at the hands of their own supporters and advocates. There are issues around things like land value, and how the increase in value for development is captured; my own view is that CPOs don't necessarily do this fairly because they don't address the opportunity cost to a landholder of being deprived of their land and then being unable to reinstate it, especially where it is a productive asset (including farmland) if the CPO is reversed at cost. These are complex equations that require a balance to be struck, which granting sweeping powers to a government to just do as it will completely omit.

If politicians and promoters did a better job advocating for their schemes, they'd gain more support. Elsewhere in the planning process, there are definitely places where it can and should be streamlined, and outcomes made significantly more definite - HS2 demonstrates just how poor the processes are, irrespective of what we may think of the project itself.

* - I'll declare an interest. I'm privately educated (not public school), my parents were public school educated and I have ancestry that could be classified as ruling elite. I am staunchly middle class and those advantages have barely percolated through.

The processes are generally fine (anything can be tweaked slightly). It is the people running the process who aren't. Not all of them obviously but, taken as a whole, there is a problem with progressing things efficiently, effectively, in a timely manner, in this country. Due process is more important than timely outcome. Commitment from the top, commitment from those administering the process, commitment from those doing the detail.

Taking the 1 million new homes figure, that should have been accompanied by some detail (not down to the last house), not 2 years later proposals for mostly urban regeneration schemes totalling 100,000 homes and taking 15 years to fruition. If there is no detail the manifesto / policy proposal is meaningless. Motherhood and apple pie.

Vote for me, I promise to: end child poverty, stop world hunger and end all wars. PS Don't ask how because I haven't got a clue but it sounds good as long as no-one asks any awkward questions about how.

Compulsory Purchase (whether it be for transport or energy infrastructure, housing, slum clearance) is the same process. Doing it through a parliamentary process or the nationally significant infrastructure project has different processes, but I've lost track (and interest to be honest). Basically* pre-consultation, decision, formal consultation, decision, public inquiry, ministerial decision, vesting order, implement. Compensation manana through the Lands Tribunal.

The commas are the problems. It sits in someone's in-tray. If you have a 28 days consultation period, day 29 can legally be the decision day, not day 28 plus 365. Line up your ducks. You do not have to wait until day 29 before opening the letters and considering your response (unlike say tenders). Before you even start, an appropriately qualified and experienced individual can guess what most of the objections coming in will be. By day 14 you will know what most of the objections are because they have been submitted. Only if someone submits a 1,000 page objection at day 27 and 23 hours and 59 minutes do you have a problem meeting the 28 plus 1 decision timeline, because you have to properly read and consider those 1,000 pages and show to an inspector / court that you have properly done so. It then depends how quickly you can read 1,000 pages to pick up anything new!

*NOTE that is a very concise summary of a legal process, seek expert advice before proceeding!

 

[SynthD]

And that's a real concern when we put nuclear plants in areas which we traditionally consider suitable. As in, places where only poor and politically irrelevant people live. Like Hartlepool, or Heysham, or Hunterston. If there's a radiation leak then no one really cares

Maybe they “don’t care” because it’s a low population area by design. Slough with its hundreds of thousands of people, they are more important simply by count. If you want to consider coal plants and their higher radioactive output, there was a lot to be critical of.

The compensation part is a red herring, not least because the government pay something like 25% over market price, plus fees. The important part is that today if your home is demolished it will be replaced by rail. In your proposal it could be replaced by a shop, a block of flats, a park, a car park. I don’t want others to have that done to them, and the GDP sacrifice seems tiny. There are already many blocks of flats north of Abbey Wood station, and more in progress. Land was found under the current rules.

If you have a 28 days consultation period, day 29 can legally be the decision day, not day 28 plus 365. Line up your ducks. You do not have to wait until day 29 before opening the letters and considering your response (unlike say tenders).[snip]

*NOTE that is a very concise summary of a legal process, seek expert advice before proceeding!

That sounds illegal. Considering each submission equally with no regard to its timing is necessary.

 

[Magdalia]

It's all fine and well saying that we shouldn't give the government wide-ranging powers to deliver things according to their manifesto commitments, but then you cannot turn around and be surprised that none of the manifest commitments end up being done.

This government has made various changes to assist in delivering these objectives, including:

• changes to planning legislation
• changes to the National Planning Policy Framework
• designating more projects as Nationally Significant, and streamlining the process for them
• establishing development corporations with compulsory purchase powers, starting in Greater Cambridge
• reinstating local housing targets, which matter because councils have to include enough land for development n their local plans to be able meet their target

that's a real concern when we put nuclear plants in areas which we traditionally consider suitable. As in, places where only poor and politically irrelevant people live. Like Hartlepool, or Heysham, or Hunterston.

Nuclear power stations require lots of water for cooling. Britain is a relatively small island with no big rivers, that's why we build nuclear reactors by the sea. And try telling that to the people of Aldeburgh and Southwold, both very close to Sizewell.

But if the exact same plant is also next door to their old public school (and I pretty much would ensure that every traditional public school had a nuclear plant near it) and Oxbridge college (it's not unreasonable to have research + power generation reactors near our key science hubs) then that line of thinking no longer holds.

In Cambridge we don't have enough water to drink, it is the biggest constraint on growth. So we definitely don't have water for cooling a nuclear reactor.