Cry Freehold! Radio Times Review by: David Crawford http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03k0s5q Duration: 38 minutes - First broadcast: Tuesday 03 December 2013 If you happen to have a spare bit of land knocking around, big enough to accommodate 30 houses, Oxford Co-Housing Group would like to hear from you. The co-operative is struggling to find a suitable plot in a city where space is at a premium. In this thought-provoking doc, Chris Bowlby, an Oxford resident himself, uses the city as an exemplar for the nationwide housing issue, which he thinks might actually be a problem with land rather than homes. Along the way he learns the complex calculations used to value a piece of land, wonders whether the value of a view can be incorporated into the price of a vacant piece of land, and explores the vexed issue of whether maintaining a green belt around cities might be doing those at the bottom of the property ladder a disservice.
About this programme Chris Bowlby investigates Britains housing crisis to see whether space is the real issue. He hears how a dynamic city such as Oxford can end up with hardly anywhere to build, why land prices make homes costly and asks if the shortage creates victims that are often overlooked.