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CPO Talking Heads: October

CPO Reforms in The Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill 

This event runs as an informal discussion with a small panel of leading and informed practitioners extracting the nuances from this months topic "CPO Reforms in The Levelling Up & Regeneration Bill". It will discuss practical issues that arise, with participants in the meeting being encouraged to listen, join in, ask questions and share comments.

Module Duration: 1 hour 1 minute

Recorded: 17/10/2022

Areas covered

Please note there are no slides accompanying this recording. 

The government has consulted on proposals around land value capture, that could see land owners paid less than the open market value of their property.

CPA board member Collin Cottage, of Ardent Infrastructure, said: “I think we can all understand the principle that the Government wants to extract more value from land but the proposals on the table are misplaced because the focus is on compulsory purchase rather than the wider planning system. The idea that if the value of land is reduced during the compulsory purchase process then the wider market will follow suit just doesn’t follow because the vast majority of transactions actually take place on the open market. What will, in fact, happen is you will create a two-tier system. You could have a land owner who falls under a compulsory purchase order who is paid a lower amount than a neighbouring land owner who falls out of the CPO area. I’m not convinced that the desire to make the process of compulsory purchase fairer, more efficient or faster is going to be achieved and this could, in fact, have the reverse effect.”

Lucy Thomas, a partner at Pinsent Masons, added: “What issue are we looking to solve and does this actually achieve it? These changes appear to only affect a particular group of ‘unlucky’ land owners. Why them? They’ve been unfortunate enough to fall within a CPO and then they discover they might not get the full value for their land. Maybe the problem isn’t with compulsory purchase but with the planning system as a whole.”

The panel will also discuss other CPO matters contained in the Bill.

October's Talking Heads