APPENDIX 5
Memorandum from Kevin Cahill
Memorandum by Kevin Cahill FRSA, MBCS, BA, author
of Who Owns Britain, the first book on landownership in
the UK in 126 years. (Canongate 2001/2002) Kevin Cahill is the
RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturing
and Commerce) spokesperson or "champion" on land issues
and will be publishing a book called Who Owns the World in
May next year. This book will be the first book ever written on
landownership worldwide and will identify over 1,000 of the world
largest landowners by name. The book will cover landownership
and landownership systems in all 231 countries and territories
on the planet. The author is working with the World Bank on its
survey of landownership systems in 135 countries world wide, due
for publication in July.
Summaries of elements of Who Owns Britain were
read into the Hansard record of the debate on the new Land Registry
Bill in December 2001. Kevin Cahill has also contributed to Ms
Barkers report. Kevin Cahill is a former research assistant in
both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
SUMMARY
The issue of house building in the UK turns,
not upon environmental issues, but mainly on the issue of the
availability of land, which in turn is directly related to how
land is used in the United Kingdom. How land is used is a direct
function of how it is owned in the United Kingdom. But the debate
so far has been conducted without a clear and simple guide to
both land use and land ownership in the UK. This very short paper
aims to provide the committee with the basic facts and figures,
to enable the debate to actually arrive at the environmental issues,
which is when the factual consequences of the proposed house building
programme can be seen in relation to the use of the land surface
of the UK as a whole.
The Committee should note that those who own
potential building land in the United Kingdom are at pains to
encourage the idea that land is scarce in the country; that there
is a shortage of potential building land. Such shibboleths as
"crowded" island, are commonplace, when the real facts
are radically at variance with such notions. To quote Professor
Martin Wolf, the deputy editor and chief economic writer at the
Financial Times. (May 14th 2004)
"Asked the wrong question, the most intelligent
analyst will fail to reach the right answer. An example is the
review of housing supply by Kate Barker of the Bank of England's
monetary policy committee. Her recent report makes an invaluable
contribution to debate on the UK's biggest economic failure; the
huge distortions in land use. But the question posed by the Treasury
was too narrow. It is not how to increase housing supply, but
how to use the country's scarce land efficiently.
Start with planning. Even in the South East
of England, just 7.8% of land is in urban use, while nearly 60%
is protected from development. A 50% increase in the land covered
by urban development would cut the non urban remainder by just
4%."
APPLYING MARTIN
WOLF'S
OBSERVATIONS TO
ONE COUNTY,
DEVON
Now let me put put Professor Wolf's percentages
into the real world.
Devon is a county of 1,658,278 acres. The population
of Devon is 1,300,000 people, approximately. This means those
of us who live in Devon have a notional 1.2 acres for our individual
use. In practice, 1,265,853 acres of Devon are agricultural land,
where, excluding villages, about 44,000 people live. (11,000 farms,
approx) The agricultural population of Devon have a notional 28.7
acres per person for their individual use. About 6% of the land
of Devon is rated as urban land, covered with bricks and mortar.
This is about 99,500 acres, leaving 292,925 acres of waste, moorland
and other unspecified land, in all, almost three times the urban
plot.(Excluding agricultural land)
The purpose of these figures is to show the
size of the urban patch, 99,500 acres, and the size of the rest
of Devon, 1,558,778 acres.
The pattern in the rest of the UK is little
different from this, excluding metropolitan areas.
And what of the agricultural plot of 1,265,853
acres in Devon? This part of Devon receives about £126,000,
000 in subsidies of various sorts (calculated at £100 per
acre, which is conservative) If the whole of the agricultural
plot was economically efficient there would be no need for subsidies,
logically. What the subsidy means is that a percentage of Devon's
agriculture is not economic, and the same for agriculture in the
rest of the country.
The Committee in its briefing mention a forecast
figure of 245,000 new houses needed in Britain each year. To illustrate
the point I am making about land availability and land use, let
us see how Devon would cope with that.
At current building densities, which are around
10 to 12 dwellings per acre, Devon would lose just 24,000 acres,
or 1.4% of its total acreage, were it to accommodate the entire
British house building programme for one year. And I can assure
you that a subsidy of £126 million means that a lot more
than 24,000 agricultural acres are economically unproductive.
THE UNITED
KINGDOM. THE
REAL PICTURE
OF LAND
USE AND
OWNERSHIP
To conduct a meaningful debate about house building,
it is first necessary to have a clear and simple idea of how land
is used and owned in the country as a whole. Here is that simple
picture.
— The total land area of the United
Kingdom is 60,318,577 acres.
— The total population of the United
Kingdom is 60,000,000 (Est 2003).
— The notional availability of land
is 1 acre per person.
But in detail:
— Agricultural land occupies 41,915,863
acres of the UK. This is about 69% of the land of the country.
There are 237,000 agricultural holdings on that plot.
— At four persons per dwelling, there
are 948,000 people living on 41,915,863 acres. That is 44 acres
per person.
— Of the 237,000 agricultural holdings,
about one third, 79,000, are rented from the other 158,000.
— 158,000 families own 41,000,000 acres,
over two thirds of the country.
— The cost of maintaining those 158,000
families in business, and of maintaining the rural plot, is £4,000,000,000
to £6,000,000,000 a year in taxpayer subsidies.
— It follows that if subsidies are
necessary a percentage of the agricultural plot is uneconomic.
Perhaps those of a fiscal turn of mind might note the advantage
of converting some revenue negative land, agricultural land, into
revenue positive land, that of urban dwellings.
A further breakdown, excluding agriculture.
— After agriculture is taken away there
remain 18,402,271 acres of the United Kingdom.
— Of that acreage, about 3,619,114
acres are reckoned to be urban, built upon with bricks and mortar.
(This is the higher of two estimates, one of 4% the other of 6%,
of urban land in the UK as a whole)
— The actual acreage in use for living
by individuals in the UK population is .06 of an acre.
— The urban plot is not subsidized
and produces revenue of about £13,000,000,000 per year. (Council
tax).
— This leaves about 14,783,157 acres
of the UK as mountain, bog, moor, waste, roads etc.
The question then is what are the land use consequences
of placing housing on about 24,500 acres of the UK each year ?
First of all there is a "loss" of
land equal to 0.04% of the land of the UK. And that, might I humbly
suggest, should be the starting point about a debate on the environmental
consequences of the projected figure for house building.
At which point it is worth noting that for a
population of 4,000,000 the Irish Republic is building 70,000
dwellings this year. For a population of 60,000,000 we are currently
building about 165,000 houses a year.
The two questions that arise are these. Are
the Irish overbuilding and are we under building ? The answer
to both questions is probably, yes. (The acreage notionally available
to each Irish person is 4.3 acres.)
IN CONCLUSION
To accelerate the current house build rate of
around 165,000 per annum, to 245,000 per annum, in the UK, would
involve a change of use to land in the UK of 0.04% of the land
surface. Over ten years, a change of use to just 0.4% of the land
surface. It would increase the size of the urban plot from 3,619,114
acres to 3,864,114 acres, out of 60,318,577 acres.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
AND CONSERVATION
QUESTIONS WHICH
ARISE
The environmental issues that arise are first
of all whether 69% of the country, the agricultural plot, parts
of which are hugely uneconomic, should be wholly protected from
development, and at what is the cost of that protection? And the
2nd question is whether properly constructed housing, with all
conservation, energy and environmental issues addressed , is not
a better use of some of the agricultural land of the country anyhow.
After all, the purpose of environmental rectitude is to provide
a better and safer environment for the people of the country.
And maybe squashing families into densities of 10 to 12 per acre,
without gardens, when so much land is available, is neither environmentally
sound, nor good conservation. Too much of the environmental debate
centres around visual amenity in the country side, without notion
of cost, when the heart of environmental concern should be about
the immediate environment in which people live, their home.
May 2004
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