Our housing situation is dire. Hard-working professionals are routinely forced to pay fortunes for faulty flats. The social ramifications of housing scarcity are appalling, with 145,000 children growing up in temporary accommodation. Today, Labour launches its manifesto, including a plan for housing based on a set of ‘golden rules’. Unfortunately, these plans are bound to […]
Last week, I wrote about how Labour’s plan for new towns – supposedly Sir Keir Starmer’s big-bang solution to the housing crisis – is unlikely to produce even a single one. There were several factors that went into why, but broadly it could be boiled down to two points. First, the proposals adopt an everything-bagel […]
Over the past few months, Labour has made a strategic choice to try and minimise the economic space between itself and the Conservatives. Rachel Reeves has pledged to match most of Jeremy Hunt’s spending plans, and her mission in the campaign seems to be reassuring right-leaning swing voters that they can trust Labour not to […]
In 2015, Benjamin Lee of The Guardian wrote an amusing piece about how some canny PR flack had spun his two-star review into gold. By carefully positioning it on a poster in the middle of a column of four-star reviews, some of which were partially obscured, it managed to give a very misleading impression without […]
Political arguments are often 80% about framing and vibes. A common rhetorical strategy in political debates is to present your own view as ‘the common-sense position’, the position that any fair-minded, reasonable person would adopt, while presenting your opponent as a deluded, wilfully blind ideologue. Rent controls are a good example. Opinion polls consistently show […]
Alongside Tax Freedom Day, we at the Adam Smith Institute have decided to highlight one of the other equally pernicious ways that poor policy choices are eating into our pay packets; namely, the objectively insane prices that many of us are paying monthly just to keep a roof over our heads. Sunday marked Cost of […]
Twenty years have passed since the publication of the Barker Review of Housing Supply, the final report of an expert inquiry into the British housing market commissioned by the Blair government, and led by Bank of England economist Kate Barker. The Review issued a stark warning: if Britain wanted to limit future increases in real […]
This piece was originally published on the Centre for Policy Studies’ new monthly newsletter, which you can sign up to here. Housing is a policy area that attracts a disproportionate number of bad takes. And most of them seem to end up being published in The Guardian. Recently, the paper produced yet another article denying that Britain […]
Few policy areas generate as much rancour as climate change and the housing shortage. However, while the two areas seem disconnected, new polling commissioned by Bright Blue indicates that improving the climate resilience of new homes can also help reduce opposition to the construction of new homes. It is no secret that the UK faces […]
From obscure 12th century statutes to amusing judicial wigs, there’s much to admire in the gradual development of Britain’s legal order. However, the outdated leasehold system which plagues more than 5m homes in England and Wales is an altogether less charming anachronism. To cut a long story short, leasehold is effectively a form of quasi-ownership, […]
The Campaign to Protect Rural England has sounded the alarm once again about the affordability of countryside living. The organisation is worried about the growing disparity between prices and incomes, especially in southern England – but as one of Britain’s foremost Nimby campaign groups, it’s hard to believe that they will accept the solutions necessary […]
For this week’s Nimby Watch, the curious case of a development in Stratford, the Nimbys of Richmond and a view of St Paul’s Cathedral. Click here to read the rest of Jonn Elledge’s columns. Where are we off to this week? Stratford. Between the Olympic Park and Westfield. Oh East London again, how novel. What’s […]
Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis. Housebuilding is down and first time buyers are struggling to get onto the housing ladder. Meanwhile, rents have rocketed and homelessness has shot up. Things can’t carry on like this. There needs to be a complete overhaul – starting with help for first time buyers in […]
The streets and squares that dominate the parts of West London surrounding Hyde Park were determined by profit, not public policy. Some of the most valuable property in the world was built by developers like Thomas Cubitt and James Burton on land which is still owned by freeholders like the Crown Estate or the Cadogan […]
I have complete sympathy with the young (increasingly the middle-aged too) who are unable to become homeowners due to a dysfunctional market that is rigged against them. The severe restrictions on supply due to our planning system mean a bold approach is demanded. Last week, the Office of National Statistics reported that the average house […]
In a new series, CapX is celebrating the way our planning system tries its very best to save the country from affordable housing or decent infrastructure. This week, the strange case of Lorimer Village and Tesco’s ‘Toxic Towers’… Where is it? Next to the Elizabeth line station in Goodmayes, out in the badlands where east […]
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