Mr. Kevin James:

I accept the Deputy's point about land. The society’s report is saying that everything has to be considered. Land, depending on whether it is being used for apartments, low-density schemes or high-density schemes, can account for between 8% and 16% of overall development costs. We need to chip away at these percentages or make land more available. The Land Development Agency, LDA, is in the same scenario as private sector developers and struggling to make projects viable. We are in extraordinary times.

For us, the focus is on short-term measures – we are not necessarily saying that they should become permanent, as they could be temporary in nature – that would allow us to make some projects viable. Right now, there is an acute shortage across the country. We need to consider how to resolve that and create high-density housing quickly. Even though small developments are equally as important, focusing on them will take away from the focus on creating high-density developments.

Our reports clearly show that, due to the limited workforce and so on, there was 13% inflation in the year up to the start of 2022. Given that a further six months have now passed, some of the large schemes that were in the planning process are no longer viable. How do we create a scenario that will break the viability deadlock? A large number of projects will not proceed unless we come up with a solution. That is what we are trying to do in examining the component parts, for example, land, soft costs and hard costs. However, further workshops and case studies of separate projects will be required if we are to determine the impact of inflation and see where the gap is. The gap has increased in the past six months.