London is delivering the fewest number of homes since the Second World War. Over the past two financial years, London has started just 15,040 homes in total. Over the same two years, London’s housing target was 175,984. That means housing starts were only 8.5% of the target, a truly dreadful figure. London’s housing shortage stands […]
You don’t expect to hear national policy being made on Reddit, and yet last week Andy Burnham did just that in an Ask Me Anything. When asked what he will do to fix the housing crisis, he pledged to ‘launch the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period’ and that ‘nothing else will […]
Most capital cities in Europe are led from the Left. London, Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Rome all have left-wing mayors. Their tenures have seen the imposition of rent controls, restrictions on tourism markets, higher taxes and more subsidies for social housing. There is, however, one city that stands apart from the rest. The Madrid Community […]
There are few things that are consistent in housing policy. The Housing Secretary has changed 10 times in the past decade. We’ve seen multiple National Planning Policy Frameworks in the past few years. Since the Housing, Town Planning, etc. Act 1909 first introduced town planning to the statute books, almost every single Parliament has passed […]
The UK has a 6.5 million home shortage. Building more homes in and around our most productive cities is the surest way to grow the economy, and the Labour Government has made building 1.5 million homes one of their main priorities. Yet somewhere, deep in the Treasury, a few tax tweaks on landfills have been […]
The UK has a housing shortage. Decades of underbuilding have driven up the cost of homes, far-outstripping wages or inflation. This is especially the case in and around our most productive cities. London, for example, has failed to build more than 50,000 homes in a year since the 1930s despite having a housing target of […]
For too long it has been too hard to build in Britain. We’ve got the fewest homes per capita of any large Western European country, HS2 is the most expensive railway in the world and Hinkley Point C will be the most expensive nuclear power plant ever constructed. We’re starting to see the consequences of […]
Winslow, a market town in Buckinghamshire, will be connected to the national rail network for the first time in 57 years when the western stage of East West Rail opens later this year. With easy connections to well-paying jobs in Oxford and Milton Keynes, the new railway will improve the lives of the town’s residents. […]
Our planning system isn’t working. England is on course to deliver fewer than 200,000 homes this year. The independent Centre for Cities reckons 442,000 homes per year is what’s needed to close the 4 million home backlog built up over seven decades of the Town and Country Planning Act. Today, Angela Rayner set out her […]
The results are in and Labour have won a landslide majority. The Conservatives lost 234 seats and their vote share shrank by 19.9%, a historically bad result for the party. The British public have decided to punish the Conservative Party because it feels like nothing works anymore. At the heart of the Conservative defeat is […]
The modern world was made in Britain. From the first steam engine and railway to splitting the atom and the first commercial nuclear power station, Britain was a nation of builders. Yet instead of continuing this proud tradition, we’ve stopped. Britain hasn’t built a new nuclear power station in 29 years and has not built […]
There’s only one way to cross the Thames east of London today. Unsurprisingly, this makes the Dartford Crossing is one of the most congested roads in Britain. While it was designed for 135,000 vehicles a day, it averages around 160,000, and on the busiest days more than 200,000 vehicles drive (slowly) over this essential piece […]
