Published: 3 February, 2012

• So Islington Council wants to demolish Ashmount School – in the face of widespread opposition – in order to build “affordable” housing on the site (Last-gasp bid to stop demolition of school, January 20). What reasonable person could possibly object?

There are an estimated 3,360 empty properties in the borough, including 1,564 shops.

In affluent Barnsbury there are, for example, at least three very long-term privately owned empties within a five-minute cycle ride of one another.

Are the owners land-banking – waiting for property prices to rise so they can pocket the unearned income from price inflation – and in so doing pushing up housing costs for everyone else?

Prices in some parts of the borough have risen at least eight times since the mid-1980s, and the average price of an Islington residential property is now £460,728 – boosted by the borough’s proximity to the City and bankers’ bonuses flowing therefrom.

If the Labour-led council wants to find a sustainable long-term solution to the borough’s housing injustice, finding ways of bringing existing empty properties back into use would be a good place to start. Let’s not forget that new-build “affordable” housing, which carries the right-to-buy, won’t remain affordable for long.

The best way of doing this is through land-value tax (LVT). Labour leader Ed Miliband supports LVT.

 London’s current mayoral election campaign presents the ideal opportunity to promote it. Can Islington’s political bosses persuade its party to run with it?

Land-value tax would fit the council’s “fairness” agenda as it would replace the ludicrously inequitable council tax – and business rate – which effectively subsidises the most expensive homes and their owners.

It would prevent land-banking, as it became more financially beneficial for owners to bring their properties into use than to keep them empty, so helping reduce price inflation.

And it would reduce tax-avoidance – a major contributor to the UK’s growing inequality – as land can’t be hidden or off-shored.

There is no housing shortage – rather housing injustice.

Meg Howarth
Ellington Street, N7