The lack of greenfield sites has made housing expensive and scarce - Telegraph

The lack of greenfield sites has made housing expensive and scarce - Telegraph

SIR – As a chartered surveyor, I disagree strongly with the chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute about the impact of planning policies on property prices (Letters, August 24). The price of properties – houses or offices – is fundamentally linked, as with every other commodity, to supply. If you reduce supply – in the case of houses, land – you force up prices.

Of course the availability of easy finance also has an effect. However, the spike in house prices over the last 10 years can be traced back to the last government’s laudable but poorly applied brownfield planning policy, which turned off the supply of greenfield (not Green Belt) land overnight. This pushed developers to inner-city sites, which cost more.

This planning policy directly resulted in the current shortage of houses and the substantial oversupply of apartments.