UK Housing Crisis

Britain’s housing crisis has been decades in the making, fuelled by government dithering, developer greed, and a tax system that rewards the wrong behaviour. Housebuilders hoard land, drip-feed supply, and rake in profits while ordinary people are priced out of homeownership. Meanwhile, successive governments set grand housing targets, only to watch them slip through their fingers like sand.

The problem isn’t that we’re incapable of building enough homes – it’s that there’s more money in not building them. Developers aren’t stupid. They know that restricting supply keeps prices – and their profits – sky-high. Why rush to build when you can sit on a land bank, watch values rise, and release homes at a snail’s pace? It’s not incompetence – it’s a rigged system working exactly as intended.

So, what’s the government’s answer? More begging. More hand-wringing. More tax incentives that developers manipulate to their advantage while still failing to deliver. It’s like paying a fox to guard the henhouse and acting surprised when the chickens disappear.

We don’t need another limp-wristed “incentive” scheme. We need a tax system that forces housebuilders to build – or pay the price. If a developer owns land with planning permission and doesn’t build within two years, tax the hell out of it. An annual levy on undeveloped land would make sitting on prime building land a financial liability rather than a risk-free investment. If they refuse to build, let the state compulsorily purchase the land at pre-permission value and sell it to someone who will.

Want lower tax rates? Great – earn them by delivering homes on time. If you hit your agreed quotas, you get a reduced corporation tax rate. If you fall short, you pay extra. No more empty promises. No more vague “market conditions” excuses. You build, you win. You stall, you pay. Simple.

There’s no shortage of luxury flats in London that no one can afford to live in. Meanwhile, first-time buyers are forced to rent overpriced shoeboxes. Developers should get tax breaks only if they prioritise affordable housing and social homes – not for yet another block of buy-to-let investments aimed at foreign speculators.

The current system of negotiating “contributions” with developers is slow, opaque, and riddled with loopholes. A flat-rate levy on land value uplift would fund local roads, schools, and GP surgeries without endless haggling. Developers know exactly what they have to pay, councils know what to expect, and projects get built without bureaucratic delays.

Right now, developers pay zero VAT when converting empty office blocks into flats, but full VAT on new builds. It’s a tax system designed by a madman. Scrap VAT on new-builds entirely – or at least reduce it for projects that actually meet housing need rather than maximising corporate profits.

We don’t need more land-banking. We don’t need more stalled projects. We don’t need more handouts to housebuilders who will take the money and still refuse to build. We need a tax system that does what it’s supposed to do: punish greed, reward productivity, and get Britain building again.

If developers want tax breaks, they should bloody well earn them.