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Housing and Urban Regeneration Blogs
On housing, the ConHome manifesto offers the right diagnosis – but not all of the right answers
Chris Walker, Policy Exchange’s Head of Housing and Planning, provides a critique of the housing section of ConservativeHome’s recently published manifesto. Chris backs the manifesto’s diagnosis that Britain’s housing crisis is one of affordability, but argues that increasing housing supply is the only way to tackle this.
Why rent controls are not the answer
Chris Walker, Policy Exchange’s Head of Housing, Planning and Urban Policy, argues that Labour’s decision to impose rent controls won’t solve our housing crisis, because it doesn’t deal with the root of the problem: a lack of supply in the housing market. Chris stresses that we need to build double the amount of houses to match increasing demand.
Budget 2014: how Osborne can reduce Labour’s poll lead on living standards
Nick Faith, Policy Exchange’s Director of Communications, writes saying that the Chancellor needs to make it clear how national policy on jobs, housing and taxes will improve voters’ personal situations.
The importance of building more homes
Ruth Porter, Policy Exchange’s Head of Economics & Social Policy, sets out some of the many reasons why we need to build more new homes, and how we can about about achieving that goal. Ruth argues that politicians have yet to catch up with voters on understanding the importance of housing as an issue.
Why no more Bluewaters, Eric?
Policy Exchange Director of Communications Nick Faith writes arguing that the best way to support the high street is not to discriminate against out of town malls. He makes the case from our report 21st Century Retail Policy that radical action is required to help high streets, including replacing poor performing councils with a management team of retail experts tasked with reinvigorating ailing high streets and allowing empty shops to be converted more easily into housing.
Autumn Statement 2013: why we need a freeze on business rates
Ahead of the Autumn Statement, Alex Morton, Head of Housing and Planning at Policy Exchange, calls for a freeze on business rates to help our ailing high streets. Alex shows that average bills are now £14,000, which is driving many small firms out of business and acting as a barrier to start-ups.
Garden cities can be wonders of our age
Ahead of the launch of the Wolfson Prize for Economics, Lord Simon Wolfson writes that inspired new garden cities in the countryside could be the answer to the UK’s housing crisis, and explains why he is launching this £250,000 prize to find the best way to build one.
Boris needs to get a grip on housing
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange’s Head of Housing and Planning, takes the Mayor to task over his failure to build enough homes to support London’s growing population, which at just 16,000 new homes in the last year is only 30% of the Mayor’s self-imposed annual target of 50,000.
Local control is key to quality
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange’s Head of Housing & Planning, argues that central planning guidance is responsible for the poor aesthetic quality of new housing, which is in turn negatively impacting the desire for new, local, development. By giving local people control over the quality of new housing, Alex believes that we will see opposition to new homes fall away.
How the Government can boost housing between now and 2015
Alex Morton, Policy Exchange’s Head of Housing & Planning, sets out a range of ways the government could start providing more homes, including: helping people to self-build, ending expensive social tenancies, ending expensive social tenancies, trying to treat those near new homes fairly, creating new powers to help quality and ensuring Help-to-Buy has an exit strategy.
