Abstract/Summary

Of all the inputs into housing production, land can be the most challenging to source. This is because of the limits imposed on the supply of land by both landowners and the planning system. The risks and corresponding potential for increased profits that are created by the UK planning system may be a key reason for the tendency towards vertical integration of land development and housing construction in the housebuilding sector. However, over the last decade, the land promotion sector has taken a much more prominent role in converting the planning status of land in return for a proportion of the resultant increase in land value. This paper explores the significance of specialist land promoters in the strategic housing land market in the UK. The paper makes three contributions. First, it maps the range of organisations that promote land through the UK planning system and demonstrates the diversity and definitional fuzziness of the organisations operating in the contemporary UK land market. Second, in contrast to prior studies which have grouped specialist land promoters with other types of market actor, it finds that specialist land promoters made a relatively small contribution to the supply of housing land in the study period. Third, the paper shows that housebuilders account for a minority of planning consents for residential development, thereby suggesting that the degree of vertical integration in the land and housing development sector in the UK may be lower than presumed.