Housebuilding

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

Storm warnings for Burnham from the weathermen of Basel

From our UK edition

Reading the annual economic report of the Bank for International Settlements while lying beside a pool with an Aperol spritz in hand is a challenge I accepted on your behalf. Based in Basel as a hub for the world’s central banks, BIS is always careful in its prose for fear of setting cats among global pigeons. But this year’s bulletin is a serious storm warning, based on four factors that in a worst-case combination could trigger market mayhem. First, inflation driven by Middle East conflict has left oil market imbalances that will take ‘several quarters to purge’, with the risk of further volatility; BIS doesn’t actually say ‘If Trump goes batshit crazier’, but that’s the subtext.

Thursday

Oscar Edmondson

Labour vs the NIMBYs, plus are sandwiches ‘for wimps’?

From our UK edition

16 min listen

Today Downing Street has continued its reset – that is definitely not a reset – by providing more details on Labour’s plan to cut the planning red tape and deliver a housing revolution. Their target is to build one and a half million new homes over the next five years by building on green belt land and giving councils mandatory targets. This has predictably been met with robust opposition from several groups who are concerned about the plan, which involves building on a green belt area the size of Surrey. Can Labour win its battle against the so-called NIMBYs (not in my backyard)? In other news, it is publication day here at The Spectator! Our special Christmas triple issue is now available online and on newsstands.

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

How safe do you feel boarding a Boeing?

From our UK edition

‘They knocked down our old house in three hours,’ says a friend who has embarked on what he says is a conventional rebuild, nothing Grand Designs about it, on the south coast. ‘But it’s taking forever to get planning permission for the new one. They want reports on everything, from bats to highway impacts: you’d think we’re trying to build a whole huge housing estate.’ And if you do happen to be in the business of building whole huge housing estates, you’ll be eager to know whether Rachel Reeves’s reforms and ‘mandatory targets’ – aimed at delivering 1.5 million new homes in this parliament – will put rockets under the planning system or run straight into a brick wall of nimbyism, exacerbated by lack of capacity and adverse market forces.