John McDonnell’s latest bright idea is that private sector tenants should have the right to buy the homes for below the market price. As perfect an example of McDonnell’s incapacity to think through an economic problem would be difficult to construct – for this doesn’t even solve the problem he’s claiming needs to be solved. […]
Earlier this year CapX launched a major new project with the Joseph Rowntree Foundation focusing on how the Government should tackle the longstanding imbalances in the British economy. ‘Rebalancing Britain’ 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. Today we hear […]
“So many of the parishes in our district are merrily approving more houses around their village,” an official from Oxfordshire fumed to me last month, “and that’s against Council policy!” I had to pinch myself: living in London, it’s normally the reverse. Making sure local people benefit is one obvious way to gain support for […]
Newspaper headlines over the weekend had suggested that the new Chancellor, Sajid Javid, was planning to switch the liability for stamp duty from house buyers to sellers. Thankfully, Javid has now quashed this story in no uncertain terms. At most, this switch might have provided some help to liquidity in a few cases, but it would be unlikely to […]
The Centre for Cities recently suggested England should end its housing crisis by ‘turning Japanese’ and copying their planning system. One can see the attraction. Japan uses a system of zoning where the government sets out in advance guidelines on what can be built in each area. Any development that fits the rules is allowed […]
Last week, CapX and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation launched Rebalancing Britain, a major new project focusing on how the next Prime Minister should tackle the longstanding imbalances in the British economy. The project will focus not only on the well-documented North/South divide, but on the way smaller towns and cities are often left behind in […]
Britain’s housing crisis is uniquely severe. We build houses more slowly than anyone else, we have seen a fastest house price rise than any developed country, and our homes are the most expensive houses compared to the average salary. Quite a record. Britain’s unique inability to build houses and our unrivalled centralisation is not a […]
In some quarters the proposed solution to Britain’s housing problems is lots and lots more social – ie below market rate – housing. For the more extreme, this should mean local councils building, owning and renting out the dwellings. As one young couple have recently found out, this is no solution at all. Thomas Gallagher […]
Take a quick stroll through a bustling city like London or New York, and you can’t help but feel that such places are the antithesis of environmental sustainability. Yet counterintuitively, large metropolises like these might just be some of the most environmentally friendly places on earth. Each year, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial […]
Soaring house prices, rising rents, and homeownership near record lows in British cities are recognised as massive political and economic challenges by all. But the flip side of these growing costs has received less attention – how political choices have gifted huge windfalls for homeowners in the wealthiest cities. Homeownership is not the same thing […]
So far, the big question in the Conservative Party leadership campaign has been how to handle Brexit. But there’s another issue that could be even more important, both for the country and for the Conservative Party’s continued existence, and scarcely anyone is talking about it. That issue is housing. The price of property in many […]
The dynamics of the UK’s housing crisis are well-documented: millions prevented from getting on the housing ladder, sky-high rents for often woefully inadequate accommodation and, underpinning it all, a planning system seemingly designed to stop development rather than encourage it (most recently detailed on CapX by Sam Watling today). Perhaps less well understood is how difficult […]
Those on the left always used to have a simple diagnosis for the housing crisis. Housing was in short supply because, from Thatcher onwards, government stopped building council houses. The state became to reliant on the private sector for delivery. There are criticisms to be made of this argument, but its main thrust – that […]
When Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liz Truss made the bold call for one million homes to be built on the green belt, some were quick to point out that such a policy wouldn’t necessarily receive a warm welcome from voters. Will Tanner, Director of the Mayite think tank Onward, drew attention to recent polling […]
At some point soon, Theresa May is going to go. The next leader of the Conservative party will then be asked to form a government, and in doing so will face an unenviable challenge. With no working majority in the House of Commons, and under pressure to hold an early General Election, whoever follows Mrs […]
Campaigning in the 1979 general election, then Prime Minister and Labour leader Jim Callaghan warned Britain of the risks of voting Conservative: “The question you will have to consider is whether we risk tearing everything up by the roots.” The Tories, he said, “were too big a gamble for the country to take”. As we […]
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