For many people, there is a brilliant piece of music or an inspiring novel that changes their life. For a freak like me, it was obviously a documentary. And of course it was a documentary about Margaret Thatcher. Released just after she died, ‘Margaret, Death of A Revolutionary’ set me on the path of believing […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in for a reckoning… Hey, you. Excuse me? Are you talking to me? Yes, you. I’ve got something you should read. Hang on a minute, shouldn’t you be asking me questions? Are you breaking the format? Damn right I am. Every fortnight, you take me somewhere in the UK, show […]
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 […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Danson Park, Bexley, in South East London. But why? I see we’re in a park! You never bring me anywhere nice. It’s a particularly nice park, too! Danson Park, which celebrated its 100th birthday last year, has a lake – which hosts boating and water sports activities – football […]
According to the Government, England is about to spend £39 billion on social housing. That may be just the start. Andy Burnham, the frontrunner to replace Keir Starmer if he wins this Friday’s Makerfield by-election, has made a large-scale expansion of social housing central to his pitch. Yet the discourse around this number focuses almost […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Winstanley, in the historical county of Lancashire. But, like certain other people in Winstanley right now, we’ve got our eyes on Westminster… Okay then, why are we in Winstanley. Where exactly is Winstanley, anyway? Well, if you’re part of the southern Westminster elite, you might say that Winstanley is […]
The scale of the housing crisis is sobering. Britain has the worst housing shortage of any major developed nation. Decades of undersupply have contributed to house prices and rents skyrocketing out of reach. In 1997, the average home cost about 3.5 times the average income. As of 2024, an aspiring buyer must devote nearly eight years’ worth of […]
According to reports over the weekend, Rachel Reeves is considering whether a new generation of public-private partnerships (PPPs), the modern successor to the old Private Finance Initiative (PFI), could help Labour’s ambitious plans for a new generation of towns. With borrowing constrained by Labour’s own fiscal rules, debt interest costs elevated and public finances under […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in south-east London, just for a change… Alright then, where have you brought me this week? We’re in rapidly-gentrifying Peckham, in south-east London. Specifically, we’re by the Aylesham Centre, a shopping centre that has clearly seen better days, and they definitely weren’t recent. Hang on a second, haven’t we been […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Bushey, a town near Watford that’s been around since the Domesday Book… I see we’re in Watford. What brings us here, then? Hang on for a second, we’re in Bushey – it’s been its own town for 1,000 years, which is long enough that we shouldn’t just smush it […]
Governments rarely earn applause for changing their minds, but sometimes it is well-deserved. In the past few weeks, ministers have killed two policies that would have made Britain poorer, a one-year freeze on private rents and a statutory power to direct where pension funds invest. The rent freeze, briefed on a Sunday and definitively buried […]
The BBC has reported claims that the capital’s housing crisis cannot be solved simply by building more homes. The argument runs that demand has outstripped anything supply could plausibly match anytime soon, so in the short run, the real issue is not just building more, but who owns existing homes. The argument is more sophisticated […]
In the pantheon of destructive, counterproductive laws of the last few centuries, Labour’s new Renters’ Rights Act, which starts today, must be up there with the worst. Perhaps alongside the Corn Laws of 1815, or the Trade Union Act of 1906 that allowed unchecked industrial unrest and economic decline, or the Town and Country Planning […]
On Monday, it seemed that Rachel Reeves had crossed the Rubicon into complete economic ineptitude. It was reported that the Government was considering a one-year rent freeze for private tenants to soften the financial blow of the Iran war. Under the plans, landlords would be prohibited from raising rents for a limited period of time, […]
Section 106 is the sort of policy you will be forgiven for not having spent much time thinking about. It is an obscure piece of planning law, tucked away in the Town and Country Planning Act, and easy to ignore. That would be a mistake. If the Government is serious about its promise to deliver […]
Here’s a fact that will warm the heart of any Anglophile: Cambridge has more Nobel prizes than the whole of France put together. It’s a remarkable fact given Cambridge is such a small place – a population of just 150,000, with city status conferred only 75 years ago. So why do I mention this? Because […]
The latest GDP figures out today will give Rachel Reeves some cause for relief. The latest estimates from the ONS suggest that the economy expanded at a rate of 0.5% in the three months to February 2026. A welcome change from the doldrums that characterised 2025. But one swallow does not make a summer, and […]
This week the IMF cut its forecast for UK growth by a hefty 0.5 percentage points to 0.8% for 2026, the sharpest downgrade of any G7 economy. The OECD last week went lower still, to 0.7%, leaving the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast of 1.1% looking increasingly optimistic. Britain cannot afford to persist with an […]
In this special edition of Nimby Watch, we’re visiting the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Hang on, are we in the posh bit of London? You never bring me anywhere nice. We are indeed in Chelsea! Right in the heart of zone one, still one of London’s most desirable postcodes, and, of course, with […]
This week, Nimby Watch is… everywhere. Or at least, it’s in ‘nature, parks and green spaces’ across the country. Right then, where are we going this time? Well, for once, it’s not so much about where we’re going as where the Nimbys are headed. That sounds ominous. It is! A coalition called Vote For Nature […]
Businesses across the UK understand the role they play in driving economic growth. It does not happen by accident – it comes from firms investing, creating jobs and backing their local communities. Nowhere is that more true than in construction – a sector built on long-term investment and the confidence to plan ahead, underpinning everything […]
The Green Party has a new plan to solve the housing crisis that is simple: make it worse. With local elections looming, the Greens are set to offer rent controls and various measures against ‘commercial housebuilders’ as part of their local election offer. It is the political equivalent of treating a fever by smashing the […]
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