Sir Oliver Letwin’s proposals for speeding up build-out rates are ambitious in their intent but curiously fail to address a substantial difficulty that could ultimately prove their undoing. His final report was published alongside the Budget today. The ambition lies in a vision of a more muscular planning system in which local authorities are encouraged… [Read More]
I’m delighted to read in the newspapers that the Prime Minister’s former adviser, Will Tanner, who now runs the new Conservative think tank Onward, is proposing support for private sector tenants to buy the home they rent. Apparently the Treasury is interested in the idea and it could even be launched in the Budget later… [Read More]
Landbanking. Did ever a bit of jargon provoke such a range of passions as ‘landbanking’? The big developers’ annual reports are full of descriptions for investors about the size of their landbanks – so much as utter the word in their company though and they regard it as an affront to their dignity. Half the… [Read More]
When Theresa May announced the government’s latest planning reforms in March, one of her most strident criticisms was of ‘unscrupulous developers’ who ‘dodge their obligation to build homes local people can afford’. In her sights was the gaming of the planning system to negotiate down private-sector contributions to affordable housing as a condition of the… [Read More]
As much as the impact of Brexit on growth is the focus of debate at the moment, the UK’s disastrous productivity growth and persistently low levels of investment pose a much bigger on-going threat to our economy. Indeed, the IMF notes this week that ‘over the medium term, growth prospects [in the UK] will depend… [Read More]
A decade on from the financial crisis, household debt relative to income is almost as high as it has ever been. After several years of deleveraging, since 2015 mortgage lending and especially consumer credit have begun to rise again. The debt-to-income ratio reached 138 per cent at the end of last year. This is lower… [Read More]
Sajid Javid made some encouraging noises on the Andrew Marr Show today but, as well as the constant disconnect between the briefing and the substance in this particular policy area, there remains a contradiction in the government’s approach to housing that remains troubling. On the plus side, he sounds more ambitious than ever in terms… [Read More]
By now, it is a well-established fact that acts of Islamic violence against Western targets are swiftly followed by local surges in reported incidences of anti-Muslim hate crime. The cities of Manchester and London, both of which lately suffered Islamic attacks, have proved no exception. In the wake of such a spike in anti-Muslim hate… [Read More]
There has been an intriguing change of tone in the government’s housing policy since the publication of the white paper in February. That document focused strongly on the progress of private-sector housebuilding, with measures designed to free up more land for developers, and to encourage those developers to then build homes faster. The role of councils was… [Read More]
The housing market is ‘broken’, the government acknowledged in the housing white paper. In precisely what way it is broken, however, it was less clear. When Sajid Javid was asked by the Communities and Local Government Select Committee recently what had been meant by this, he pointed to the problem of high and still rising… [Read More]