The Government has today announced a new programme, First Homes, which will give first time buyers a whopping 30% discount on the price of a new home. The Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government believes the discount on the average newly-built home in England would be £94,000. With discounts like that, it’s no wonder […]
Living with Beauty, the final report of the late Sir Roger Scruton’s Commission on Building Better, Building Beautiful, has no fewer than 45 recommendations to transform the quality and quantity of what we build. Restored to his role of Chair after losing it through a misquoted and misrepresented interview with the New Statesman, Sir Roger […]
Rent controls have been tried, tested, and have failed in numerous European cities. Yet Sadiq Khan is campaigning on a ticket to introduce rent controls ahead of the London Mayoral elections in May. Rent controls might seem like an intuitively good idea, but the experience of other cities shows the disastrous unintended consequences of such […]
We want more greenery. We want to address climate change. We want to attract people back to our small towns and villages. We want to improve health and well-being. We want devolution. We want to empower people with more control. Perhaps more than anything, we want to rebuild active communities – indeed the drift away […]
Ian Mulheirn, an analyst who argues that there is no shortage of homes, has written a new post citing a recent estimate that if we had doubled the responsiveness of our housing production – to still below the underwhelming levels of Canada, Japan and Denmark – prices would only be about 9% lower than they […]
The most important policy of Boris Johnson’s new government may be one that wasn’t in the manifesto at all. Today’s news that the government intends radical planning reform is welcome to everyone who understands the profound damage to wages, growth and fairness caused by our decades-long failure to build enough homes in the right places. […]
With Boris Johnson’s election win early Friday morning, he has won over a huge number of working class voters. It would appear his vision of one nation Conservatism championed by Benjamin Disraeli is back. One issue that must be addressed is one that does not discussed often enough: homelessness and rough sleeping. Chancellor Sajid Javid […]
A political leader who has just secured a large majority has rarely regretted doing too much, too quickly. Boris Johnson’s extraordinary opportunity for radical reform of the structures of government and economy must not be wasted. The challenge of delivering a successful economy for everyone is immense. So here are five ideas for the new government […]
Recently released Government housebuilding data contains a pleasant surprise – the number of new dwellings in England was over 241,000. This is the highest rate of housebuilding in England since the target for 240,000 new homes a year for the UK was set back in 2007. This is good news for housing affordability, and national […]
This Christmas, 126,000 children in England will be living in temporary accommodation, having been made homeless with their families. The failure by successive governments to build enough social housing has made it impossible for low income families to put a secure, affordable roof over their head. No one deserves to live in inadequate housing for […]
There’s a lot for voters to like in Labour’s new manifesto, and it will probably further boost their image after the party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, fought the Prime Minister to a draw in their televised debate. Public services are creaking after nearly a decade of austerity. This manifesto commits to returning much of the funding […]
Theresa May’s stamp duty reforms were great for first-time buyers – unless you live in London or the South East. In June 2018 my fiancée and I made arguably the biggest decision of our lives, to purchase our first property together, a beautiful two-bedroom flat in Hertfordshire. We were delighted by the Government’s announcement in […]
‘Rebalancing Britain’ is a major collaboration between CapX and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation focusing on how the Government should tackle the longstanding imbalances in the British economy. The project focuses not only on the well-documented North/South divide, but on the way smaller towns and cities are often left behind in national policy debates. I think […]
Britain’s housing crisis is unique in the Western world: in the 1970s, the average buyer needed under three gross annual salaries for a house. Now they need over seven. In my recent book Raising the Roof, co-authored with Jacob Rees-Mogg, one of the central theses is that the cause of this housing crisis is found in […]
Foreigners can float in and out of China without ever understanding the world around them. They sit at the dinner table, happy that the mayor’s brother has stayed for the meal and that they’re just one nod and one wink away from a deal. Yet they may have little idea who he works for, nor […]
With the support of the Atlas Network, CapX is publishing a new series of essays on the theme of Illiberalism in Europe, looking at the different threats to liberal economies and societies across the continent, from populism to protectionism and corruption. The dramatic rise in house prices is one of the stories of our time. Between […]
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