The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 Was Actually the First Blow to Farmers Before Inheritance Tax Changes

I should also mention that whilst LURA does not specifically target building homes to deal with illegal immigration, the Act aims to address housing shortages, which of course directly benefits all residents, including those deemed as ‘asylum seekers’. I say this because it is worth noting that the UK government has used various properties, including those from the private rental and social housing markets, to accommodate asylum seekers, and over 58,000 asylum seekers were housed in such properties across England, Wales, and Scotland as of early 2024. So, one may not need to take a very large leap to argue that LURA could be used to build accommodation for the same in the future. Indeed, this elderly couple were told they had to sell their home to accommodate refugees earlier this year.

Key powers of LURA include:

1. Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs): Local councils can use CPOs to acquire land without the owner’s consent if it is in the public interest. This is often used for projects like housing, schools, hospitals, and urban regeneration.
2. Removal of Hope Value: LURA allows councils to apply to the Secretary of State to remove the “hope value” from the compensation calculation. This makes it cheaper for councils to acquire land for development, as they do not have to pay inflated prices based on future development potential2.
3. Extended Enforcement Period: The time period for taking enforcement action against unauthorised development has been extended from 4 to 10 years.
4. Temporary Stop Notices: Councils can issue temporary stop notices for up to 56 days to halt unauthorised development while they investigate.
5. Enforcement Warning Notices: New powers allow councils to issue enforcement warning notices, asking the person responsible to submit a retrospective planning application within a specified period.
6. Council tax on second properties: New powers for local authorities in England to charge additional council tax on second homes, such as holiday homes. Hence, from April 2025, councils can impose a premium of up to 100% additional council tax on properties that are furnished, but not used as an owner’s main residence.

Local authority zoning plans

LURA is closely connected to local authority zoning plans and introduced several reforms to the planning system, including the creation of Joint Spatial Development Strategies (JSDSs) and supplementary plans. These strategies and plans guide the development and use of land, ensuring that it aligns with ‘strategic objectives’ such as ‘infrastructure development, climate change mitigation, and affordable housing’. Local councils are therefore required to consider these strategies and plans when creating their local zoning plans, which means that LURA has a significant impact on how local councils approach zoning and land use planning. Who asked us if we wanted this? No one as far as I can remember.

Compulsory purchase orders (CPO’s), zoning plans, and climate targets

Under a zoning plan, a local authority can decide to use compulsory purchase powers to acquire someone’s land if it is deemed necessary for ‘public benefit’. This will be the case if it facilitates developments such as urban regeneration and housing schemes that align with the strategic objectives set out in a local authority’s zoning plan.

Given that zoning plans have a heavy focus on climate objectives, many cities and towns are incorporating wide climate considerations into their plans, promoting the acquisition of properties to be turned into ‘low-carbon buildings’, as well as increasing green spaces, and implementing ‘transit-oriented development’ to reduce reliance on cars. You can therefore see where we could end up with all of this and again, I say, did we consent?

There is actually a target for local authorities to focus on climate projects in their zoning plans under Section 19(1A) of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. This requires local planning authorities to include policies that ‘ensure the development and use of land to contribute to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change’. I can hear you all ask “where is the scientifically based proof of this climate change” and I’m with you. Many of us know the net zero agenda and ‘climate emergency’ is a lucrative financial scam as do the 1,900 scientists and professionals that have signed the Clintel declaration. But of course, they are just all conspiracy theorists like us and Clintel’s statement about the modelling used to create support such an emergency is just wild speculation and not based in science (sarcasm). Read it for yourself “What comes out is fully dependent on what theoreticians and programmers have put in: hypotheses, assumptions, relationships, parameterizations, stability constraints, etc. Unfortunately, in mainstream climate science most of this input is undeclared. To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in.  This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. We should free ourselves from the naïve belief in immature climate models. In the future, climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science”. Yep, those Clintel buggers are just bonkers, right??

But, despite the dodgy modelling and fake science, we are now in the position that local authorities are legally obligated to consider fake science climate targets and objectives when planning and zoning land use. Additionally, and quite incredibly, many local authorities have now declared climate emergencies, (seriously where do they find all these narrative followers to employ), and have set targets to become carbon neutral well before the (ridiculous) national target of 2050. As of now, over 300 local authorities have made a climate emergency declaration, including:

• Cambridgeshire County Council
• Devon County Council
• Hampshire County Council
• Oxfordshire County Council
• Somerset County Council
• Warwickshire County Council
• West Sussex County Council

Utterly bonkers.

As to who gets to decide if a decision on whether a CPO is in the public interest under a zoning plan to assist the ‘climate emergency’, do not for one minute think that this would be us, the people. The decision is typically made by the acquiring authority, (of course), which is usually a local council or another public body. Therefore, all the acquiring authority must do is demonstrate a case ‘in the public interest’ – not hard to do if you are going to rely on combatting the (fake) climate emergency that is going to boil us all to death in a few short years.

Challenging a CPO

As with everything, of course, this is not easy. First, an objection must be submitted to the acquiring authority within the specified period (usually 28 days from the date of the CPO notice). So, we must ask the acquiring authority to mark its own homework about its decision! If the objection is not resolved, the case may be referred to a public inquiry where an independent inspector will review the evidence and make a recommendation. As a last resort, if there is dissatisfaction about the outcome of the prior measures, a judicial review can be applied for in the High Court. This must be within six weeks of the CPO being confirmed and can only be on the grounds of procedural errors, the authority acting outside its powers (ultra vires), or the decision being unreasonable. Of course, the cost of a judicial review to challenge a CPO is expensive. On average, total legal costs for even a straightforward judicial review can range from £40,000 to £50,000, and costs can increase significantly above this if the case is complex and involves multiple legal teams.

Removal of hope value in a CPO

As regards the removal of hope value from compensation calculations for CPO’s that get the nod, there has been wide criticism such as:

1. Unfair Compensation: Removing hope value can lead to unfair compensation for landowners, as it does not account for the potential future value of the land.
2. Increased Legal Challenges: The removal of hope value may result in more legal challenges, including judicial reviews, as landowners seek fair compensation.
3. Uncertainty for Developers: The potential for additional compensation in the future if the acquiring authority’s intentions are not fulfilled creates uncertainty for developers.
4. Impact on Viability: The removal of hope value could affect the viability of development schemes, as landowners may be less willing to sell at lower prices.

Hope value was removed because when introducing LURA the government considered it was ‘contentious’ and posed a barrier to their ‘levelling up’ policies. That is speak for it would be too expensive and the government wanted the land cheaper. Hence LURA incorporated changes to the CPO system so that a local authority can now apply to the Secretary of State to remove, or cap, hope value from compensation payments to landowners whose land is being compulsorily purchased for education, affordable housing or health-related schemes. Hence, the local authority cannot just decide to remove hope value itself. It does have to ask the Secretary of State if it can. However, LURA came into force before the change of government in the UK this year, and before they took office Labour’s proposed policy on hope value indicated that they would enable local authorities to buy land for development without factoring in hope value, regardless of the circumstances. Given this, some of us cynics may argue that it will be inevitable that the Secretary of State will now more readily agree to remove hope value upon an application to do so. Labour, it seems, does not like landowners to be compensated for the true value of their land when deciding to ‘steal it off of them’ for ‘affordable housing’. By the way, the Tories are no better.

In case you are wondering what hope value is, it refers to the potential future increase in land value that landowners may expect if their land is re-zoned or developed. In other words, if you have a few acres with an agricultural value of say, £40,000, but those acres have development potential, then the true value with the hope value is going to be significantly more than £40,000 – say maybe £400,000 – purely because the land can be developed. LURA’s provisions remove the right to get the hope value of £400,000 on land subject to a CPO, and would mean in the example given, that the landowner would receive just £40,000.

Impact on farmers

LURA’s changes significantly undermine the role of hope value in the land market, with negative implications for all landowners, but particularly farmers and rural communities. This is because most of us will not have any hope value attached to our normal standard properties, but many farmers and landowners will. One of the core criticisms of LURA is therefore its potential to devalue agricultural land by removing or limiting the ability of landowners to realise future profits from the sale or re-development of their land.

Traditionally, landowners have relied on hope value as a means of leveraging their land’s future potential. For instance, a farmer whose land is not currently developable may still hold out hope that in the future, due to urban expansion or changes in planning regulations, it could become valuable for housing or commercial development. LURA’s focus on levelling up economically disadvantaged regions and promoting regeneration through tools such as CPO’s and land value capture directly undermines this expectation, and by reducing the speculative value of land, LURA removes a critical financial incentive for landowners to maintain and invest in rural or underdeveloped land that they hold.

Hope value plays a crucial role in encouraging long-term investment in all land. However, farmers and rural landowners particularly rely on the anticipated future value of their land to finance improvements, such as upgrading infrastructure or diversifying land use. The removal of hope value therefore disincentivises this and farmers may be reluctant to invest in building new barns, planting trees, or enhancing the biodiversity of their land if they believe that the land’s value is tied solely to its agricultural productivity, rather than its future development potential. This shift could exacerbate rural decline, particularly in areas where farming is already under financial strain and where hope value once provided an important cushion against market volatility. With the loss of this financial buffer, farmers may be forced to sell land to large developers or industrial interests, further eroding local control over land use and potentially altering the rural landscape in ways that are not aligned with the needs or interests of local communities.

Impact on food security and other areas connected to farming