Rumours have been circulating in the housing policy ether for several months now. Given the housing policy influence of the Policy Exchange at No 10 those rumours should have been, and were, treated seriously. And now it looks like those rumours are well-founded. They’ve only gone and done […]
In this podcast I discuss proposals emanating from the Conservative party for new ways to dispose of social housing. At the moment IDS’s proposal to give properties to previously unemployed tenants who manage to secure a job for a year is the one gaining the most media attention. […]
Vince Cable made a substantial speech to the Royal Economic Society at the beginning of this week. The speech is worth reading in full because it represents one of the most thorough, thoughtful and wide-ranging perspectives on the economy that you are likely to hear from a front […]
If you were entertaining any idea that changes to property and land taxes could help to curb the volatility of the UK housing market then just stop it. That is the message of a new report Taxing Issues? released by the Policy Exchange this week. This is a […]
Over the last few years Policy Exchange has been a prolific contributor to the debate over the direction of housing policy. As regular readers will know, I have not always been entirely complimentary about those contributions. In particular the PX regularly exhibits an unhealthy fixation with the planning […]
One of the Coalition government’s first acts was to signal the intention to get rid of Regional Spatial Strategies (RSSs). They were seen as the embodiment of Labour’s centralising, top-down approach. In their stead we were to enter a new era of localism. Or, possibly, Localism. Spatial planning […]
It’s hard to know what to make of yesterday’s slew of policy initiatives in the housing field. It is clear that they are directed primarily at boosting the economy, rather than being any sort of considered response to the problems of the housing market. You get the sense […]
What’s new in the housing world this week? What have we learnt? The primary lesson so far would seem to be that rich people really don’t like living next to poor people. They’d rather the poor, and even the middling sorts, made themselves scarce and freed up the […]
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