In recent months, those in Government have been besieged by pleas for help. Industry after industry is queueing up for assistance, or outright rescue. On the face of it, the housebuilding industry would seem to be one of the lucky ones. The Government made sure to single out construction as an area that should keep […]
On my short list of coronavirus silver linings is finally getting round to reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs’ classic 1961 account of why some cities and neighbourhoods thrive and others don’t. The book’s provocative thesis was recognised as important from the moment it was published and it quickly became […]
What would people say if I walked into Tesco tomorrow, filled my trolley with food and drink to the value of £200 and at the checkout said I am not paying for it because the Government has said supermarkets have to provide my groceries for the next five months, whether I pay for them or […]
The Government is reportedly planning to set up ‘development corporations’ with the power to override local councils and move to a zonal planning system, so what you can build is set out by clear rules in advance. The Green Belt will, however, remain untouched. I welcome any reform to get more good homes built. Development […]
The English planning system has defeated decades of ambitious reformers. That is because they all misunderstood what it does: they thought it was a system for planning. The mistake is understandable, because that is what the system was invented to do. It was designed to decant population out of major cities into the new towns […]
Many landlords, tenants in house-shares and neighbours of anti-social tenants will be filled with despair at the latest news that there may be a three-month extension to the current three-month moratorium on evictions in the private rented sector. The announcement was made by Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick during a virtual Q&A with MPs on the […]
An inevitable consequence of the Coronavirus will be the acceleration or magnification of existing trends – be it towards home working or the intensification of the shift from physical to online shopping. Doomsayers who have portended the high street apocalypse in recent years may feel a sense of grim vindication following recent news of Debenhams, […]
Wartime analogies litter our conversations around the Covid-19 crisis. We’re “mobilising” resources to increase testing, opening “field hospitals” and politicians promise that we will “beat this disease”. The Queen’s televised speech saw her reference the era’s most famous song when she said “we’ll meet again”, but the real giveaway was the fact that she had […]
Though much attention has rightly focused on the plight of tenants during the coronavirus outbreak, the crisis has had a huge impact on landlords too. Contrary to popular perceptions, many landlords are by no means wealthy. Indeed, whether they are among the 45% who own only one rental property or they are full-time ‘portfolio’ landlords, […]
Many households face coronavirus in a precarious state. Almost half of working-age adults have essentially no savings; likewise, household debt is now at 130% of national income, up from just 80% in the late 1990s. Perhaps most of all we are made vulnerable by another, more long-term crisis: rising house prices, diminishing home ownership, and […]
The UK is at a critical point in its history. Brexit, a new economic framework and a recalibrating Labour Party rub up alongside the dash to carbon neutral, the impacts of AI and, of course, Covid-19. The decisions that are taken now will set the direction of the country for years to come. When we look […]
Sadiq Khan has a record that would embarrass even Justin Bieber. The ‘greatest’ hits London has suffered since his election in 2016 include: Robbery up 73% Street muggings up 56% Homicides up 34% Not everything is up of course. Transport reliability is down, TFL’s budget has tanked after some very effective self-sabotage, while rates of […]
George Osborne has achieved the miraculous – he’s managed to get the New Economics Foundation to say something half sensible on the subject of economics. The prompt for this momentous occasion? Help to Buy, quite possibly the worst policy of any British government in recent memory. Let’s cast our mind back to the original idea, […]
Our pronounced regional inequality is a symptom of an economy that is broken in many important areas. Fixing those would go a long way to make the Government’s much-vaunted ‘levelling up’ a reality. Four of the most broken areas are higher education, banking, transport and housing. There are radical but realistic ways to improve each of […]
This weekend saw the collapse of yet another attempt to fix the deeply broken British system of property tax. A trial balloon of a new ‘mansion tax’, floated to the papers, was quickly shot down by a barrage of outrage from the Conservative heartlands. It doesn’t have to be so hard. There are tried and […]
Shortly before being named Boris Johnson’s housing adviser, Jack Airey published a fascinating, radical and thoughtful report proposing US-style rules-based zoning to replace our current discretionary land use planning system. In doing so he echoed Nicholas Boys Smith, the founder of Create Streets and surviving chair of the Building Better Building Beautiful Commission (BBBBC), who […]
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