Elsewhere - on why big business doesn't own England

At Conservative Home:

For me, the significance of Shrubsole’s work isn’t the ‘look at all those secret, tax-avoiding businesses owning land’ but, rather, the picture he provides of how land investment is skewed by the UK’s planning system. Without housing land supply being controlled by the Government, there would be no need for land banking and no speculative markets in green belt agricultural land.

Moreover, we now know that corporate land ownership is mostly purposeful rather than speculative – companies like Peel Group own things (the Manchester Ship Canal, John Lennon Airport, the Port of Liverpool) that are actively managed, income generating assets, and the same goes for the land ownerships of water companies and other utilities.

The whole piece is here.