Not so fast, Mr Brown

Many people in housebuilding will, when pressed, admit that they haven't quite got round to this essential but slightly daunting task yet. That's understandable, given that the documents were released just before the industry departed for its well-earned Christmas break and there are still five weeks to go for comment before the deadlines.

But within the government's package of proposals there is one document that anyone connected with development already knows almost verbatim. More than that, many are already speculating about the fine detail that has yet to be revealed.

That document is the Treasury's Planning gain supplement: a consultation. We all knew it was coming. Kate Barker's proposal for a tax on the uplift in value on a site when it receives planning approval was too good a money-raising opportunity for the Treasury to miss. It is the obvious means of raising the cash for all that infrastructure that the country so desperately needs.

The industry has been waiting ever since Kate Barker's review in March 2004 for her recommendation to be converted to policy, and the detail of the policy published so far confirms the industry's worst fears. The document has little flesh on the bones, but what there is has worrying echoes of previous taxes, that, as we all know, failed to work.

The landowners interviewed on page 22 of this issue are singularly unimpressed by what they have seen so far. Their view is crucial: all the government's fine aspirations for housing policy will come to nothing if landowners simply stop selling their land for development. The Treasury will have to listen to the chorus of disapproval if it is to make the planning gain supplement into a price worth paying.