Responding to Michael Gove's announcement on Tuesday that the Tories were going to support the idea of Community Land Trusts as a key part of housing policy Dan Rogerson's press release was out today:

Liberal Democrats : Tories are playing catch up on community land trusts - Rogerson:

Tories are playing catch up on community land trusts - Rogerson

4 January 2007

The Liberal Democrats today attacked the Conservative’s latest housing policy initiative as a desperate attempt to catch up with reality without offering a new vision. Liberal Democrat Housing Spokesperson, Dan Rogerson MP said:

"There’s no need to set up a taskforce to look at whether community land trusts can deliver affordable housing - they already are, and have been doing so for many years in the UK.

"The key issue is whether there is land available to make them work. One answer is to use surplus land held by Government departments such as the MoD, the Department of Health and English Partnerships.

"Another is to use the planning system to require developers to provide land that can then be handed over to the land trusts.

"For all of Mr Gove’s claims to be following in the footsteps of the 17th century Levellers, I can’t imagine he’ll be clearing the millionaires’ mansions off St George’s Hill in Weybridge, Surrey, where the Levellers’ first community land trust was set up."

The problem I have Dan, as a Lib Dem activist and Community Land Trust activist, is that two years ago we were all very excited about the party supporting CLTs in the Housing Policy paper. We had a conference at Warwick the following week and a magazine did the rounds with Charles Kennedy in full flow at conference on the cover setting out our Community Land Trust policy. But in those two years we have done absolutely nothing to back up our policy that I can see or hear, and I'm pretty well plugged into the CLT gossip.

Tell your local government planning and housing leaders that "there’s no need to...look at whether community land trusts can deliver affordable housing - they already are". You may be convinced but that hasn't filtered through to local policy making even in those local authorities we actually control. I know of one council with a "CLT officer" if you will, and another paid for out of housing pathfinder money or whatever it's called.

The plain fact is that Michael Gove on Tuesday did more to get CLTs in peoples' minds and on their lips than we have in the two years we've had the policy. Truth is, I never did really believe we understood the model when we adopted it as policy and have been shy in promoting it as a result. I have offered your team leader that I could go round to Lib Dem council groups to explain it to them if he thought it was worthwhile and it didn't even get a response.

Well guess what, tonight I've written to all the Tory group leaders in Oxfordshire offering to go and give them group briefings on it. When will we as a party learn that if we have good ideas, it's no use sitting back and waiting for one of the others to adopt it and then complain that they're johnny-come-latelies adopting a good policy that we first thought of?  We need to yell about such things with conviction as soon as we adopt them and be the obvious reason others adopt it too!

Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see the local MP speaking on the same platform at Burford as Billy Bragg and Tony Benn!