Virtual Book Launch: 'The Property Lobby: the hidden reality behind the housing crisis'

About the event

The link to the event can be found on the booking link.

• 4.00pm: Welcome, Michael Edwards
• 4.10pm Bob Colenutt brief introduction to the book
• 4.30pm Dialogue led by Anna Minton followed by an open discussion

About the book

The Property Lobby puts under the spotlight “the finance-housebuilding complex” of landowners, city finance, and housebuilders which, along with Government, bakes in housing shortages, exorbitant prices and rents into the UK economy and ensures there is a permanent housing and planning crisis. It examines the growth and activities of the major property lobby groups that determine this state of affairs and shows how housing associations and local authorities have now been sucked in.

With examples from London, Northamptonshire and Oxford, it highlights the role of the property lobby in shaping and gaming Government planning and housing policy, including manipulating viability assessment to reduce developers’ planning obligations to fund social and affordable housing and undermining the quality of new development.

Radical reform of the land market, a break-up of the housebuilders cartel, and a separation of social and affordable housing provision from the housebuilders is required to break the impasse. The book points to the critical role of community and local housing action in challenging the property lobby and demonstrating there is an alternative to the grip of the finance-housebuilding complex.