The message needed no political decoding. The chancellor's speech to the Conservative Party conference last October ended with the phrase "we are the builders" and made no fewer than 25 mentions of the word "build" And when "George the Builder" - as he was inevitably nicknamed by the tabloids - presented his Autumn Statement a few weeks later, he vowed to unleash Britain's "biggest housebuilding programme since the 1970s" But the Autumn Statement didn't just throw down the gauntlet to the nation's housebuilders. It also issued a challenge to Britain's local authorities - to get more out of their assets.
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