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

Everyone keeps saying UK housebuilders are in trouble. The FT quietly made a more interesting point this week: things don’t need to get “good” for the sector – they just need to stop getting worse. Three reasons why that matters: Planning is finally (slowly) moving.
After a decade of dysfunction, the direction of travel is changing. Mandatory targets are back, green belt flexibility is creeping in, and planning certainty – even marginally – has a big impact on land value and

Every so often a report comes out that makes you stop and think. The latest HBF analysis is one of those moments. £9bn sitting unspent £3bn held for more than five years £2bn allocated for schools £700m set aside for affordable homes These numbers are not alarming to me. They are energising. They show how much potential is already in the system and how much can be turned into real schools, real homes and real community benefit. One line in the report stood out: “There is a gr