Time to leverage The National Trust

Home ownership is a form of social insurance. Giving people the opportunity to own land and a home is huge for social cohesion.

Do we look in the correct place for solutions, though?

THE NATIONAL TRUST owns over 248,000 hectares (610,000 acres)” and manages 780 miles of coastline... What if that was 200,000 instead and the rest used for amazing new housing and communities?

Most of its [The National Trust's] estate was gifted to it by the SUPER RICH of their time. Their legacies frozen in time, inaccessible to reuse or the creation of new mini hamlets and villages. No mausoleums to the industrial revolution's outlying opportunity.

You'd think that those like Gary Stevenson who are calling for wealth tax would spot that 248,000 is frozen in time as an homage to an aristocracy who lived in a time of Empires? But I think this prod will trigger, because for some reason we hold the NT in an untouchable esteem. Why? It represents something, no doubt, but it isn't opportunity, democracy and capitalism.

Take Cliveden, near me! The Astor Family gifted the estate (which they could live in as long as they wished - turned out to be until 1966), with an endowment.

I appreciate the beauty of Cliveden, but it's hard to deny it is nature. It's a developed site that could house people and hundreds of new homes - without denting the countryside at all.

Controversial, but if just 10-20 estates were gifted to the state for a new, beautiful reuse plan... Wouldn't that be better than the Green Belt being pummelled?

It might make a handy return too for insurance investment teams.