A new Neighbourhood Planning and Infrastructure Bill which will enable the Land Registry to be sold off was announced in yesterday’s Queen’s Speech.

Confirming the privatisation of the Land Registry as going ahead, government notes about the Bill say the sale would “support the delivery of a modern, digitally-based land registration service that will benefit the Land Registry’s customers, such as people buying or selling their homes”.

The Bill is overall flagged up as supporting the Government’s ambition to deliver 1m new homes while protecting “those areas that we value most including the Green Belt”.

It will also “further empower local communities” in planning homes and infrastructure.

Neighbourhood planning will be strengthened, while new developments will be speeded up.

Local authorities will not be able to insist on pre-planning conditions being in place before work starts, unless these conditions are absolutely necessary.

Compulsory purchase law is also to be tidied up after years of conflicting cases and outcomes.

In future, owners of properties which are, for example, needed to make way for infrastructure or new housing estates will receive the market value of their properties as of now, and without taking into account the value of the scheme underlying the need for compulsory purchase.

This could have winners and losers. The winners will be those home owners whose homes are blighted by, for example, new high-speed railway lines and complain that their properties will be compulsorily bought at a pittance. The new law would mean that no account would be taken of the blight.

Losers could be those whose properties stand in the way of large-scale housing schemes to which they object. Such owners could in future have to weigh up getting far less via compulsory purchase than if they were to sell at full development land value at an earlier stage to a developer.

The Bill will also enable the independent National Infrastructure Commission to be established on a statutory basis.