Intervention Point 2: Strategic Land Use Security Bill
🗺 What are we trying to do?
We want Parliament to pass a new law — the Strategic Land Use Security Bill — to protect the UK’s long-term control over critical land assets. This means making sure land needed for homes, food, infrastructure, and environmental protection can’t be locked away by speculators or foreign entities.
🎯 What will this achieve?
- Blocks harmful land banking and foreign monopolies
- Protects land needed for community needs and future generations
- Establishes a new legal framework to intervene in misuse or withholding of land
🏩 NATIONAL LEVEL – What should our MP do?
✅ 1. Support or sponsor a draft bill
Push for the introduction of the Strategic Land Use Security Bill. This should include powers to:
- Audit land ownership and identify strategic sites
- Apply use-it-or-lose-it rules to land hoarding
- Limit speculative or hostile foreign control of land
✅ 2. Raise the issue in Parliament
Call for a statement from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities about:
- How the Government will secure strategic land assets
- Whether new powers will be introduced to prevent misuse of key land
✅ 3. Demand data transparency
Request the publication of data on:
- Who owns strategic land near infrastructure or settlements
- How much land is stalled or banked for speculative value
🏡 LOCAL LEVEL (EHDC) – What can be done right now?
✅ 1. Map strategic land locally
Identify sites vital to housing, climate adaptation, energy, or food security and flag them in planning documents.
✅ 2. Use planning tools to challenge hoarding
- Refuse or delay permissions where applicants are known to stall delivery.
- Use Local Plan policies and phasing to prioritise trustworthy, active developers.
✅ 3. Declare strategic protection zones
Use Planning Position Statements (PPS) or guidance notes to:
- Declare land near key infrastructure or settlements as “strategic”
- Signal that the council will resist land speculation in these zones
🤝 What should our MP do locally?
- Ask EHDC to publish a public register of stalled land
- Convene a public meeting on land control and community needs
- Include EHDC’s local strategy in briefings with ministers and select committees