DEVELOPERS that are unreasonably slow to start building on land where they have planning permission should be forced to sell the site, a leading Derby councillor has said.

Councillor Lucy Care, deputy leader of the city’s Liberal Democrat group, said this would provide an incentive for firms to work at a pace that kept up with housing need.

She picked out Friar Gate Goods Yard, owned by developer Clowes, as one site which could benefit from a new law giving councils the power to make her suggestion a reality.

The company was granted planning permission in October 2011 for 140 homes, offices, cafes and shops, while turning the grade-two-listed bonded warehouse on the site into a supermarket.

Forcing firms to sell undeveloped land is one of a list of changes she wants Derby City Council to petition the Government for that would give local authorities more influence over housing sites.

Mrs Care said she wanted to see councils given the opportunity to force a developer to sell land after a reasonable period of time.

She said: “There would need to be a potential purchaser in place before you went through the process.

“One way of doing that might be to put a notice on a piece of land and say this land is going to be subject to the new mechanism unless building starts in x number of years. People could then express an interest in that land.”

She added that a developer seen as not moving quickly enough would be able to challenge such a notice in court.

Andrew Bock, who is in charge of Friar Gate Goods Yard for Clowes, said that such changes were “made nationally, not by random people doing it locally”.

In June, Mr Bock revealed that the downturn in financial fortunes for Britain’s supermarkets had prevented progress on the site because developing it would be dependent on having a supermarket partner.

The goods yard, which is the size of eight football pitches, has been derelict for nearly 50 years and has been owned by Clowes for more than three decades.

Mrs Care’s other suggestions include giving councils the power to tax developers which have planning approval for a site “where building has not started or where it has begun but is not continuing at a reasonable rate”.

The Local Government Association, which represents England’s councils, has proposed that, in some cases, developers should have to pay council tax on homes which remain unbuilt when initial planning approval expires.

But Mrs Care said that was flawed because planning permission granted to a developer could be an “outline” go-ahead for a maximum number of homes on the site rather than the green light for a detailed proposal including the size of properties.

This, she said, means it would not be possible to work out what the council tax banding could be for the properties.

Mrs Care said she would prefer to see a tax on an area of undeveloped land being based on the difference between how much it was worth before and after it became a site for housing.

The national Home Builders Federation has said “speeding up the rate at which planning permissions are granted” was one of the keys to “significant, sustainable” increases in house-building.

Mrs Care’s motion calling on the council to petition the Government for the new laws will be voted on by Derby City Council members at a meeting on Wednesday.