Latest news with #landseizure
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Rayner gives councils more power to seize land from housebuilders
Angela Rayner will give councils powers to seize land from housebuilders who fail to complete developments on time. For the first time, developers will have to commit to delivery timeframes before they get planning permission. They will also have to submit annual reports to councils showing their progress. Housebuilders who secure planning permissions 'simply to trade land speculatively' could face penalties worth thousands per unbuilt home, the Government said. The Government hopes the proposals will see promised new homes delivered faster. Ms Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary, said: 'This Government has taken radical steps to overhaul the planning system to get Britain building again after years of inaction. 'In the name of delivering security for working people, we are backing the builders not the blockers. Now it's time for developers to roll up their sleeves and play their part. 'We're going even further to get the homes we need. No more sites with planning permission gathering dust for decades while a generation struggle to get on the housing ladder.' Ms Rayner unveiled the reforms following a week in which speculation ran rampant that she is positioning herself for a run at the Labour leadership. A leaked memo from Ms Rayner to the Chancellor, in which she proposed a series of tax rises, was seen as a challenge by the Left to Sir Keir Starmer. Reports also emerged that Ms Rayner has been involved in heated discussions with No 10 about planned cuts to her budget. Rumours had circulated around Westminster that Sir Kier was preparing to strip her of her housing brief and effectively demote her in a Cabinet reshuffle. Kevin Hollinrake, the shadow housing secretary, said: 'We need more houses for people in Britain and we support measures to ensure developers speed up housebuilding. 'But they are adding so many burdens on builders, their targets already seem like a distant memory. And as Rayner has admitted live on air, many of these houses will end up going to migrants.' The senior Conservative added: 'With Labour's open-door border policy, this problem is only going to get worse, not better. And many hard-working Brits will be shut out of the housing market forever. 'In the same week that Angela Rayner has been caught red-handed plotting to raise everyone's taxes, it's clear she doesn't have the interests of working people at heart.' On Sunday, the Government is publishing a Planning Reform Working Paper setting out the proposals. Large housing sites can take more than 10 years to build, but those with more affordable homes can be built twice as fast, the Government said. 'Developers drag their heels' Housing charity Shelter welcomed the plans. Alicia Walker, its assistant director of advocacy and activism, said: 'It's good to see the Government getting tougher on private developers. With 1.3 million households waiting for a social home and homelessness continuing to climb, we urgently need new homes built at speed. 'Developers drag their heels when building new homes to keep prices high and make bigger profits – often dodging their responsibility to build social housing altogether. 'Meanwhile, thousands of families who are bearing the brunt of the housing emergency, homeless in temporary accommodation or crushed by skyrocketing rents, cannot afford to wait. 'Getting private developers to build new homes faster is crucial, but the only way to end the housing emergency for good is to get councils and housing associations building social housing as well. 'To do this, the Government must invest in building 90,000 social rent homes a year for 10 years in the upcoming Spending Review.'
New York Times
21-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
When Trump Was the One Taking Land From Farmers
President Trump has repeatedly attacked South Africa during his second term, accusing its government of seizing land from white farmers as part of a systemic persecution of Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority that led the apartheid regime. It's an accusation that skips over the facts, but one that has shaped his administration's decision to welcome white Afrikaners as refugees — and its animus toward the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, whom Trump is meeting with in Washington today. It also reminds me of a story I reported about six years ago, when I found myself face to face with a white farmer preparing for the government to take his land. This did not happen in South Africa. It was in South Texas, and it was because of Trump. And it's a reminder of how a president who has railed against the state's power to seize land overseas has long been quick to embrace similar tools at home, both as a developer and then in the White House. 'Take the land' At the root of Trump's claims of discrimination is a law Ramaphosa signed this year that allows the government to seize privately held land — without providing compensation — when it's in the public interest. The law is part of the South African government's efforts to chip away at the racial inequities shaped by decades of apartheid rule. Legal experts say the seizures are likely to be rare. And the law provides for judicial review, giving property owners an opportunity to challenge any effort to take their land. That has not stopped Trump from falsely accusing South Africa of 'confiscating land' as he cut off foreign aid to the nation this year. But Trump himself used government-sanctioned land grabs in recent years to build his promised wall along the United States-Mexico border, albeit through a system that works very differently from South Africa's. 'Take the land,' Trump told his aides in 2019, as he pushed them to accelerate construction — years before he would accuse the African National Congress of confiscating land. By the end of Trump's first term, his administration filed more than 110 lawsuits against landowners in Texas as it sought to secure space for his border wall, turning to eminent domain even though many conservatives view it as an excess of government power that violates the sanctity of private property. (In the United States, when the government takes land by eminent domain, it offers compensation, though it is not always as much as landowners would like.) Trump's interest in eminent domain didn't start there. As a casino developer in Atlantic City, N.J., he urged local officials to use eminent domain to seize the home of an older widow that stood in the way of a parking lot he wanted to build. She prevailed. 'Eminent domain is very interesting,' Trump said in a speech in 2019 in the Rose Garden. 'But without eminent domain, you wouldn't have any highways, you wouldn't have any schools, you wouldn't have any roadways. What we're doing with eminent domain is, in many cases, we'll make a deal up front.' That is not how the farmers I interviewed in South Texas felt. 'I don't want to see a damn wall.' Take Richard Drawe, who supports Trump and his goal of bolstering border security. After years of living on the border with Mexico, Drawe did not believe a wall was worth the cost, given the existing barriers and technology at the border to deter migration. And he wanted to hold on to farmland that had been in his family for a century. Landowners like Drawe could acquiesce, allowing the authorities to use and survey their land and accepting a monetary offer for it. Or they could go to court, where the government would argue that the construction of the wall was an emergency. Lawyers told me at the time that legal action almost always ended with the government getting the land anyway. The Trump administration accelerated its efforts to seize private property for the wall during the coronavirus pandemic, bringing a flurry of lawsuits at the start of 2020. Drawe reluctantly agreed to allow the government to build on his land because he did not believe he had much of a choice. 'It just kind of screwed up my whole idyllic living, out in the country, having that damn wall there,' he said in an interview on Wednesday. 'I'm never happy with eminent domain laws, being a landowner.' The administration paid him about $42,000 for the 12 acres needed for the wall project and about $197,000 to compensate for depressing the value of his farm. It limited views of the sunsets that he and his wife used to savor after a day's work. Drawe told me at the time in 2019 that he felt that Trump's taking of farmland would 'ruin' his life. But he is now resigned to waking up and seeing the wall on his land. 'I really don't give it a hoot anymore,' Drawe said.
The National
21-05-2025
- Politics
- The National
Trump to meet South Africa's Ramaphosa amid tension over white 'genocide' claims
US President Donald Trump is set to host South African leader Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday in a bid to repair strained relations that further deteriorated after claims of a white 'genocide' against white people in the African country. Mr Trump has alleged that the minority white community in South Africa is being persecuted and that their land is being seized. 'It's a genocide that's taking place,' the President said last week. 'It's a terrible thing that's taking place, and the farmers are being killed – they happen to be white.' The South African government has denied the claims of genocide. The US granted refugee status to 59 Afrikaners last week and they were given a ceremonial welcome at Washington-area Dulles airport. The move led to outrage and even ridicule in the US and around the world. Afrikaners are the descendants of the European colonisers mainly from the Netherlands who arrived in South Africa nearly 400 years ago. In 1948, the all-white government of South Africa established the apartheid system, which persisted until the 1990s. Apartheid laws instituted strict separation between the races and institutionalised discrimination, primarily against black South Africans. The legacies of that system still linger, experts say: despite making up only 7 per cent of the population, white people in South Africa still own the majority of land and are the highest earners. The genocide accusations stem in part from a law Mr Ramaphosa signed in January, the Expropriation Bill, which allows the government to confiscate land, in some instances without compensation, and redistribute it to marginalised groups. Before the admission of the Afrikaner refugees, relations were already strained between South Africa and the US. South Africa in late 2023 filed a case against US ally Israel at the International Court of Justice over its conduct of the war in Gaza, accusing Israel of committing genocide in the enclave. The US made the move to admit the Afrikaners despite Mr Trump issuing a series of executive orders and other actions in his first 100 days in office that have made it more difficult for many migrants to come to the US. His administration has also stripped protections for thousands of Afghans, Venezuelans and Haitians who had been allowed to temporarily live in the US. Mr Trump has made immigration a main focus of his second term. He won the election on a promise to impose hardline immigration policies mainly at the southern border. On his first day office, he suspended the asylum programme, a network of agencies and organisations that gave refuge to people from around the world fleeing violent conflicts, war and political persecution. He has argued that migrants and foreign workers are a threat to the US and take advantage of the country. The Trump administration has defended what now appears to be making Afrikaners an exception. 'Well, because it's a small subset, it's a new issue, and the President identified it as a problem and wanted to use it as an example,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday during testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Tuesday. 'If you look at all the persecuted people the world, it's millions of people – they can't all come here.' During the session, Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen shouted at Mr Rubio, saying that claims that Afrikaners are victims of genocide are 'manufactured'. 'You tried to block the admission of individuals who had already been approved to come here as refugees, while making bogus claims to justify granting such status to Afrikaners,' he said. 'You've made a mockery of our country's refugee process, turning it into a system of global apartheid, where political ideology and race, more than truth or need matter.' Mr Ramaphosa and Mr Trump are also expected to discuss trade, after the US imposed a 30 per cent tariff on South Africa as part of the US President's sweeping levies last month. An additional 25 per cent tariff was placed on South African-made vehicles entering the US, putting vehicle surcharges at 55 per cent. Days after the tariffs were announced, Mr Trump put a 90-day pause in place to allow for negotiations. Trump adviser Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa to a wealthy white family, said in March that his Starlink service was not allowed to operate in South Africa because he was 'not black' – a reference to affirmative action laws in the country that aim to increase black South Africans' economic participation. Bloomberg reported that the South African President plans to offer Mr Musk a 'workaround' that would allow him to operate in the country.
BBC News
12-05-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
Refugee status for white South Africans: First group flying to US
The first set of 49 white South Africans to be granted refugee status by President Donald Trump's administration are on their way to the Sunday they boarded a flight from Johannesburg which is due to land in Washington DC later on comes after a weekend of speculation about when the Afrikaners would leave for America, amid criticism from the South African government who described the US resettlement scheme as "politically motivated".Relations between South Africa and the US have been tense for months, after an executive order in February in which President Trump stated that Afrikaners were victims of "racial discrimination". The US has criticised domestic South African policy, accusing the government of seizing land from white farmers without any compensation - something which the southern African nation says has not tensions have been tense for months as President Trump tasked his administration with formulating plans to potentially resettle Afrikaners in the US. In March, South Africa's ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled after accusing President Trump of using "white victimhood as a dog whistle", leading to the US accusing Mr Rasool of "race-baiting".The current group of refugees comprises 49 people, who are expected to land in Washington DC later on Monday, before continuing to Trump's openness to accepting Afrikaner refugees comes as the US has engaged in a wider crackdown on migrants and asylum seekers from other countries. More BBC stories about South Africa: Almost 70,000 South Africans interested in US asylumWhat's really driving Trump's fury with South Africa?Is it checkmate for South Africa after Trump threats? Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
