Prosperous cities should be incentivised and empowered to grow.  Restricted land supply and transport bottlenecks are making housing unaffordable and transport congested in our most prosperous cities, risking choking off growth and deterring businesses from creating jobs.

Growing cities should be financially incentivised to increase land available for development and build more houses to alleviate constraints on their growth.  Land auctions – that enable Local Authorities to keep a portion of the planning gain to reinvest in communities – should be piloted in a few high-demand areas, such as Cambridge, Brighton and Reading.

The Government should combine incentives with a loosening of national restrictions on development, giving Local Authorities greater control over where development takes place.  The Government should abolish the national target that 60 percent of all new dwellings are built on brownfield land, which has had the side-effect of restricting development in our most successful cities and pushing up development costs.  Local Authorities should be enabled to determine where new houses are built. As transport investment comes under pressure in the tight spending environment, small-scale investments to relieve bottlenecks and reduce congestion must be maintained to prevent successful cities from being held back.