General Developments

Edit : Apologies for the rant, just sick and tired of the NIMBYs in these places constantly using 'the Valleys' as an excuse for why they don't want homes built. We have new housing developments north of the M4, we even have trains in some places.

No need to say sorry. I suspect we all agree with you!

This all stems from people thinking Cardiff is and always will be a small town in the countryside. It's a capital city (which we're supposedly proud of, although you wouldn't think it) so why are they saying things like "We don't need another 40,000 people here"?

Can I ask a basic question about planning/compulsory purchases to those in the know.

I am farmer Jones and I own a couple of fields on the out-skirts of Cardiff.
My family have farmed them for years and they are zoned as agricultural land
They are worth £10,000/acre say.

Council re-zoned them for housing, suddenly the land is worth £1m/acre

Bellweather Homes buy the land and build houses.

Do I hit the jack-pot and get all the money, which seems a bit arbitrary as the wealth has come out of Planning decision not of my making.
or do I get paid the complusary purchase price plus compensation of say £20k/acre

But I doubt Bellweather Homes pays £20k/acre, so does the Council buy for 20k and then sell for £1m???

You are the lucky farmer Jones!

UNLESS - a super smart quango called the Welsh Land Authority bought your land at agricultural rates in the 1990s and idiots at the Welsh Government sold it off twenty years later as agricutural land a couple of months before planning permission was granted.

To be fair, the Welsh Government officials probably weren't idiots. More likely, they were just corrupt and have got away with it.

The fact remains land was sold at £15k an acre that was worth £2 million a year later. I hope Bermuda is nice!

So you are saying the current land owner gets all the money?

So why hasn't some form of investment trust gone around the country buying up agricultural land next to cities for a premium and lease it back to the farmers. One day it will be inevitably become housing or another form development.

The risks of corruption by inventing 'new money' at a stroke of a pen is huge. I am still a bit confused.

In effect - that kind of thing has happened. Many farmers do rent their fields from big estates - some of which go back generations, some of which have been more recently put together. What stops big increases in land prices around big cities in anticipation of development is that development is not possible - because of greenbelt. Greenbelt covers huge swathes of the home counties, and around many other cities small (Cambridge) and big (Birmingham). See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/g ... -belt.html.

Cities that don't have greenbelt may have lower demand for housing (and therefore do not feel the need to protect countryside so vigorously), but in any case development on greenfield is still often difficult and severely limited. So its big risk paying over the odds for any one particular piece of agri land - until it gets on the local plan, or looks like doing so.

I agree that it is a bit silly to pass on the housing demand to neighbouring authorities although I wouldn't dismiss it entirely. No-one tends to mention VoG. You have land between Llandough and Dinas that is not much more than a mile or two from the city centre.

I agree that it is a bit silly to pass on the housing demand to neighbouring authorities although I wouldn't dismiss it entirely. No-one tends to mention VoG. You have land between Llandough and Dinas that is not much more than a mile or two from the city centre.

The point Frank is that other authorities, in general, already are building. It's Cardiff that barely is.

So you are saying the current land owner gets all the money?

Yes, that is the case - although it is taxable.

That's why farms close to urban areas seldom come on the market and are frequently tenanted. The new developments north of Fairwater, for instance, are on land owned by the Plymouth Estate which will receive a massive windfall. Shrewdly, when the Plymouths handed Saint Fagans Castle over to the national museum they held on to the farm land in the hope of just such an eventuality

It is taxable but may be subject to agricultural relief.