Here’s something nice, from architect Peter Barber: Council housing which we just finished for London Borough of Enfield… YIPEEE pic.twitter.com/jIWHO5yQn9 — Peter barber (@PpeterPeter) April 19, 2018 Barber’s practice designed the Ordnance Road project for Enfield. Like all architectural practices its website is completely incomprehensible, but I found information at the builders’. Neilcott Group say…
Read More Simple planningAditya Chakrabortty reports on the London Borough of Enfield’s housing department, under siege by the forces of Iain Duncan Smith. It looks like everything the bedroom tax critics thought might happen is happening, with the exception of the buy-to-let bandits going over the edge. Actually, that might be happening as well, but it’s hard to…
Read More The simple plan goes into actionThere’s a lot of interesting stuff in this Randeep Ramesh piece in the Grauniad. However, the coalition is concerned that these levels of building will not meet the demand for properties, particularly in south-east England where outright normal home ownership is not an option for many. So [Danny] Alexander and his Tory cabinet colleague Eric…
Read More Two simple plans – mine and anotherHere’s an example of a bond issue backed by rents, the key financial component of the Simple Plan. It’s got to be better than this: This is what 9% average price growth looks like across the whole distribution of London house prices. pic.twitter.com/2kiyArRi9h — Neal Hudson (@resi_analyst) October 21, 2013 Or waiting for dead men’s…
Read More Some simple plan linksIt’s probably a telling data point that I, and quite a few other people, thought Faisal Islam was being sarcastic about this story and the councillor had somehow finagled the money. Perhaps he got the council to buy the property from himself? Emerging low trust society, h’ware ya. obviously I meant Stevenage Council bought 20…
Read More Simple Plan implementation!I’m using the big megaphone this blogkend, but here are a couple of Simple Plan things. The London Labour Housing Group’s Red Brick discusses why the distinction between general government gross debt and public sector net debt is important. GGGD is internationally comparable, and excludes public corporations, which hardly exist any more but do include…
Read More Simple Plan linksThis is the post Tim Montgomerie wouldn’t have In London alone, the annual flow of Local Housing Allowance into landlords’ pockets is over two billion pounds. The taxpayer is forking out with no expectation of getting anything for it. But the policy of radically reducing the LHA valuations, from the 80th to the 30th percentile…
Read More A Tory Case for the Simple PlanOK, so this is the extended 12″ jacking tech-house hot wax remix of the piece at Liberal Conspiracy. It’s October, 2013. As unseasonable snowfall turns the streets into a fairy wonderland and the transport system into a Pratchettesque mess, police are herding the last holdouts out of the Elthorne Estate in London, N19. Homeless shelters…
Read More The Simple Plan: The Definitive StatementSo, Create Streets. Inside Housing has the story, pointing out that the thing campaigning for knocking down high-rise social housing in south London is basically a group of Tories. But there’s a bit more, or less, to it than that. Their wesbite won’t tell you whether they are a company, a charity, a lobby, or…
Read More A slightly less simple plan.So I pushed the simple plan on various people. Here’s a scorecard. LabourList: Henry Root-esque NO REPLY. Liberal Conspiracy: Initially, NO REPLY. Badgered, Sunny Hundal said it was in his queue to read but it was so long. Politics is hard, let’s go shopping. Dave Hill at the Guardian London blog: Hasn’t read it. Will…
Read More Simple Plan: response from the cutting edge of the online Left!