A 20 per cent charge sits on almost every extension, rewire, re-roof, damp repair and loft conversion carried out on the 29 million homes we already have. This is a decision, and it is the most distorting feature of the tax system as it applies to the built environment. The anomaly is simple. Demolish a house and build a new one, and the work is zero-rated, with VAT on inputs recovered in full. Repair, extend or retrofit that same house, and it's taxed at 20 per cent, with th

Andy Burnham has promised Britain's biggest council housebuilding programme since 1945. That is the headline everyone has taken from his first week in office, and it is worth pausing on the word "council," because it points to a shift in who commissions housing in this country, not just how much of it gets built. For most of the last two decades, private housebuilders have set the pace. They chose the sites, ran the programmes, and instructed the consultants. Councils and reg

Geography has become an excuse in this industry. Firms carve the country up between them as though expertise were a local resource, and everyone calls this discipline when really it is just habit. The result is a market that limits itself for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of advice on offer. Spending time in Leeds for UKREiiF brought this into focus. It is a brilliant city with real energy, particularly around Kirkgate, and a good reminder that the best wor

Recent major London schemes show that commercial projects are no longer shaped at planning committee. The critical decisions now happen earlier, through safeguarding constraints, infrastructure consultation zones, political risk, fiscal exposure and cost assumptions formed before design begins. JPMorgan’s proposed Canary Wharf headquarters illustrates this shift. Progress depended not only on architectural ambition but on early engagement with London City Airport over height