Prime minister Theresa May has appointed Shelter’s former head of policy Toby Lloyd as the new Number 10 housing policy adviser.
The appointment of the outspoken campaigner on land and housing issues will come as a surprise for some. He has long campaigned about the cost of land and in 2017 co-authored the book Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing.
In a comment piece for The Guardian in February 2017, he wrote: “To really fix the problem of land, we need to do more than increase housebuilding.
“We need to break the positive feedback cycle between the financial system, land values and the wider economy, and to capture more of the unearned windfalls private landowners currently pocket at the expense of society at large.”
In a Shelter blog post published in November 2017, he wrote: “The single most important thing we can do to build more affordable homes is lower the high cost of land.”
Prior to Shelter, Lloyd worked at Navigant consultancy and before that he was executive of campaigning and research at the Henry George Foundation.
He has also worked at the London Rebuilding Society, developing non-profit equity release products for vulnerable homeowners.
Between 2005 and 2007 he was senior policy manager at the Greater London Authority, where he worked on the housing strategy for the then mayor of London Ken Livingstone.
Lloyd led Shelter’s proposal for a new garden city on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, which was the runner-up in the 2014 Wolfson Economics Prize. In his spare time, Lloyd is also part of a Hackney co-housing project.
Lloyd’s blog from his Shelter tenure reveals some of his views on key housing and land policy issues:
On the green belt:
“Some parts of the green belt are ideally suited for release – like brownfield land in the green belt, or monocultural fields next to Tube stations.
“Where the local community is asked to give up green belt land, it’s only right that it should get the absolute best possible outcomes from that development.
“Where green belt land is released it should therefore go straight into green belt community trusts, which would hold it in perpetuity for the benefit of the local community.
“The trusts would then be able to work with local people to plan and develop truly exemplary neighbourhoods, knowing that value created would go to support the provision of infrastructure and affordable homes.”
On compulsory purchase laws:
“The single most important thing we can do to build more affordable homes is lower the high cost of land.
“As it stands, high land prices make it nearly impossible to build the affordable, high-quality homes and infrastructure communities want and need.
“This is because the price of land for development is currently based on a speculative value taken from what could be built on it.
“We need to reset the price of land to its true market value. That means reforming the compulsory purchase laws. The main reason why landowners are able to ask for so much for their land is because current compulsory purchase laws encourage them to.
“To be clear, we’re not talking about compulsory purchase happening more often – it should always be a last resort – but that these rules, which ultimately determine the market price of land, should be changed to stop giving landowners unreasonable expectations as to what their land is worth.”
On extending right-to-buy to the private rented sector:
“We opposed the forced sale of council homes in the recent Housing & Planning Act, and have huge concerns about the ‘voluntary’ right-to-buy for housing association tenants.
While benefiting a lucky few, these policies threaten to fatally undermine the chances of those in real need to ever get a secure, affordable, social home.
“But if they are to be pushed through, the least we can do is provide a level playing field for those left languishing in the expensive and insecure private rented sector.
“And if a private renters’ right to buy could also deliver longer tenancies and more moderate house prices, it would have a lot going for it.”
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