Builders are not ‘land-banking’ but their homes are too boring, says Letwin review

MP Oliver Letwin’s long-awaited investigation into land-banking by big developers has failed to find proof of the alleged practice. “The review found no evidence that speculative land-banking is part of the business model for major house builders, nor that this is a driver of slow build out rates,” Chancellor Phillip Hammond said during his budget speech yesterday. But big builders are not off the hook. The report also takes a highly critical view of the homes they build and calls for large estates to be constructed more creatively and offer a wider range of home designs. In recent years big developers have been accused by many experts and lobby groups of ‘land banking’ or ‘sitting’ on land for their own financial gain. But Letwin’s review instead points a finger at the uninspiring and ‘homogenous’ nature of the homes they built as the main culprit. His report concludes that too many developments and the properties within them look and feel the same and this makes them harder to sell – or ‘absorb into the market’, as he puts it. Greater diversity To remedy the problem, Letwin recommends that new planning rules are introduced to force site developers containing more than 1,500…