Dear Peter

For twenty years, the Land Authority developed as a specialist "public service land dealer", unique within the UK.  Labour created LAW in 1977, under the Community Land Act 1976.  It was a brilliant socialist innovation, targeting one of the key bottlenecks of the modern economy, namely that of development land supply.  In England and Scotland, no such institution emerged, because the land-dealing function was assigned to the mainstream local authorities.  A fiscal incentive given to them, to expand the function, under the Development Land Tax Act 1976.  In 1980, Thatcher repealed both the Community Land Act and Development Land Tax, and abolished (for England and Wales) the local authority land-dealing function.

But for Wales, she did not dare abolish the Land Authority.  The Authority had the enthusiastic backing of the construction and development industries in Wales, who already valued the constructive and expert role that it was playing.  It was a small agency (perhaps 40 staff in all) - half of them professional chartered surveyors from the public sector, supported by a small group of professional town-planners and civil engineers. 

The great innovation of its period of operation was a running contract with the Welsh Office to monitor the adequacy of residential land supply in Wales.  As I remember, the WO funded the equivalent of three staff posts dedicated to this process.  Their task was to conduct a continuing review of land availability - taking into account local market demand and the willingness of landowners to sell, as well as conventional "land use" planning designations.  And the WO imposed one wise requirement, namely that each assessment should be made jointly with representatives of the development industry, who had to "sign off" each area report.

LAW developed, in the course of this work, a very coherent analysis of Market Demand Areas in Wales, being the effective local markets where new house-construction was in demand.  And the technique served both public and private sector well.  When this highly-specialised work was folded into the Welsh Development Agency, the industry opposed the loss.  I have seen no sight nor sound of this approach, since the amalgamation - if may be happening unknown to me, as I am no longer active in the housebuilding industry, now dealing with commercial, industrial and office property.

The idea should have been extended to the whole of the UK.   It was a Welsh public service jewel, which was negligently destroyed, in the cause of "rationalising quangos".  If it had been extended to England, we would now not be having John Prescott's panic intervention into the planning system, to open up new housing sites. These issues would have been addressed systematically over a long period of years, as they were in Wales.

If I am mistaken, and if the WDA is still keeping up this excellent programme with the same intensity and application, I would be delighted to be proved wrong.  And if these rolling assessment continue, they should now be rolled out for England...