Mr. John Spain:

To add to that, the reforming of our CPO legislation has been talked about for many decades but has not happened. This is yet another example of something that should be looked at urgently and brought forward to enable local authorities, perhaps together with an agency established by Government, to tackle derelict sites in a proactive way by acquiring sites through a rolling fund and making them available for building. They have to be built and delivered as part of the arrangement to sell them on and using the funding from that to buy the next one. This would bring about the regeneration of urban areas which have considerable capacity to deliver on housing in very sustainable locations. That could also be used to help regenerate our town centres through promoting in a proactive way town centre retail development. Site assembly is one of the key issues and a rolling fund and streamlined CPO powers would greatly assist in that area. Proactive measures will achieve much more than simply imposing fiscal penalties on site owners.