Letters to the editor - 25 July 2007

An opportunity missed to show proper way to lift?

Your Specification Focus on Roads & Landscaping in last week's issue shows a concrete slab being manhandled into place by a man with a bent back.

By my calculations, the full-size slabs of 900mm x 300mm x 50mm which you mention in the piece must weigh in excess of 30kg.

We are fighting a continual battle with contractors to take notice of HSE legislation on manual handling and in my (subjective, I admit) view this could have been an opportunity to show how slabs of this weight should be handled.

Colin Harper

Director 

AL-Vac UK

The slab in the picture we featured last week was not full size. Where heavy slabs are to be laid, we would of course expect contractors to adhere to HSE legislation - Ed.

Misled by media over planning gain supplement

I consider much of the recent media speculation that the government will ditch the introduction of a planning gain supplement (PGS), levied on landowners and developers, in favour of a roof tax similar to the system operated in Milton Keynes, to be misleading.

PGS may be dropped in name when the government outlines its revised housing Green Paper this week, but it may well not remove all the components of this proposed tax.

Implementing the Milton Keynes model, where builders have, typically, paid an £18,000 tariff per residential unit, would not be straightforward nationwide. Although it would be a transparent and simple tax, costs per unit vary hugely across the country, depending on how difficult a site is to develop. Without proper controls, this could give local councils even greater negotiation powers with developers.

A further issue with the tariff system is that it could favour the development of less costly greenfield sites over brownfield sites, which are more costly to develop.

It is evident that the government also wishes to constrain the current freedom provided to local planning authorities under the existing Section 106 arrangements and this has been one of the driving forces behind the PGS proposals.

The Green Paper published this week will no doubt refer to this aspect.

Inevitably, the development sector will never welcome a new proposed tax such as PGS, but nor do developers enjoy the existing Section 106 system, which can be both expensive and time consuming for the parties involved.

Stephen Herring

Real estate tax partner 

BDO Stoy Hayward