For this week’s edition of ‘Nimby Watch’, we’re off to the South West coast, where the locals want to stop a boatload of foreign electricity from coming ashore… Where oh where oh where? North Devon. Lovely place for a holiday. So’s Morocco. Sorry, what? All will become clear. It’s not houses this week, it’s a […]
Regular readers of CapX may be passingly familiar with development orders – I have mentioned them here once or twice. For those unfamiliar, here’s my previous summary: Set out in Section 59 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, development orders are instruments of extraordinary potential scope. Here are the two most crucial bits: […]
Here is the good news: the Conservatives will go into the next election with a clear appeal to younger voters. They will widen home ownership by liberalising planning restrictions to increase supply, thus making housing more affordable. In the recent Conservative leadership contest, this was the view of both Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick. The […]
From the 18th to the early 20th centuries, Britain had the best transport infrastructure in the world. Some 1,100 companies laid out over 20,000 miles of tolled roads (‘turnpikes’), giving Britain the best road network in Europe. Some 400 miles of canals, also dug by private companies, linked up Britain’s natural river system to create […]
Housing politics in Britain tends to be predictable. Labour try to build more in Tory and Liberal Democrat-voting areas, while the Tories try to build more in London. Every so often, however, something unexpected happens. One of those events occurred this week, when the Labour Government announced a new system of ‘planning passports’. As reported, […]
Housing nerds who watched ‘Friends’ (ie, me and other millennials who read CapX) will probably remember that Monica’s apartment, and others in the series, are subject to rent controls. Ross (David Schwimmer) learns about the downsides of rent controls the hard way. After going through a messy breakup, Ross was unceremoniously turfed out of his […]
Since the 1980s, council tenants in England have enjoyed the right to buy their homes. When they do, councils are required to offer them a discount from what the properties would cost if they were sold on the private market. This reflects the fact that social tenants already have lifetime tenancies of the properties with […]
You can’t fault Labour’s commitment to hit the ground running when it comes to housebuilding, with the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, reiterating the pledge to build one and a half million new homes, followed by Angela Rayner’s speech last week outlining an overhaul of planning rules designed to help deliver that commitment. But the Conservative government […]
In what has been a week marred by tragedy in Southport and military escalation abroad, we’ve had little cause for optimism. But one story which could have lifted spirits ended up being quite the mixed bag. On Tuesday, the Government released the revised edition of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) – the document which […]
The first tranche of Labour’s long-awaited housing reforms have arrived. They are a mixed bag. The package is probably a net improvement on the current system, but it is unclear that Labour are making the most of the immense political capital they have for fixing the housing shortage, Britain’s greatest problem. Here are the key […]
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 new Chancellor’s commitment to building more homes we need is obviously to be welcomed. However, we must hope that she has learnt the lessons from our history of failed attempts at planning reform before she finds herself in a quagmire. It goes without saying that Britain faces one of the worst and longest-running housing […]
Local government financing is in a state of crisis. Six local authorities have declared bankruptcy since 2021 and more are expected to follow in the coming years. One of the biggest drivers of the crisis is the spiralling cost of providing temporary accommodation to homeless households. Temporary accommodation is designed to be just that; emergency […]
This is an edited version of remarks delivered by the author as part of Civic Future’s ‘The New Wild West’ summit. Should the state play a larger role in the UK economy? My answer is “no” – many problems that Britain faces are down to too much government action and too much of the wrong […]
Attacking landlords has become the great bipartisan cause in British politics. It is a convenient displacement activity. After all, the real culprits when it comes to high rents are the politicians themselves – for maintaining planning rules which restrict the housing supply. It doesn’t help matters that much of the media is willing to accept […]
One of the early winners in this election campaign has been the Yimby (Yes In My Backyard) movement, which advocates for more building to solve the housing crisis. Advocates for Yimbyism have succeeded in part because the housing crisis has become so severe that it forced its way into the national conversation. But another reason […]
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