Well this is utterly depressing How London unwittingly killed housebuilding - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @jburnmurdoch.ft.com

Second staircases in buildings under 30m height will save one life every 6,153 years, but this requirement is reducing housebuilding, so 90,000 fewer homes built over 5 years. Meanwhile 74 children have died from poor conditions temporary accommodation in 5 years. www.thetimes.com/business/com...

Congratulations to @cagewarwick.bsky.social Their report: Solving Britain’s Housing Crisis: Where and how to build 1.5 million homes has been selected by our Editorial Panel as one of the 'must read' reports of 2025, www.thinkhouse.org.uk/reports/2025/ #ukhousing #housingresearch #housingpolicy

Second staircases in buildings under 30m height will save one life every 6,153 years, but this requirement is reducing housebuilding, so 90,000 fewer homes built over 5 years. Meanwhile 74 children have died from poor conditions temporary accommodation in 5 years. www.thetimes.com/business/com...

To be clear - these are not "surplus" homes - they're much-wanted social homes, that social landlords are considering selling to alleviate financial pressure. The proposed solution here is that they're sold to an investment vehicle to be let to homeless people at higher rents.

This is a really interesting thread showing the potential to densify housing in areas with lots of detached houses and large(ish) gardens. We could do a lot more of this.

"The price just doesn't matter if you can't get a home". Good write up here of the problems of trying to use rent controls to force down private rents. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This is an interesting read on the impact of recent policy change on second homes and holiday lets - it's quite a complex picture, as homeowners respond to the changes by reclassifying homes, and with newbuild homes temporarily classed as vacant/second homes until they're first occupied.

This is a really interesting read setting out the historical context and political changes in attitudes towards immigration over the last 30+ years.

Homicides in England and Wales at lowest level in nearly 50 years www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Some really helpful announcements here for supporting the supply of new social housing: - Loans to landlords at just 0.1% interest - £3.5m for the Council Housebuilding Support Fund - Less bureaucracy for councils who don't own much council housing to start building www.gov.uk/government/n...

We welcomed the Government’s Warm Homes Plan. Our members across the housing sector know how important it is to reduce energy bills, keep homes warm and reduce emissions from our housing stock. Four key points from the Warm Homes Plan that the housing sector should be aware of:

Excellent article here by @jamesriding.bsky.social summarising the main things to know from the new Warm Homes Plan

Out of 20 people who "buy" a copy of the Big Issue from a street vendor, only one actually takes the magazine 😮 Tricky to see how they can reinvent a model reliant on printed media

This is kind of true - most of the costs will fall *directly* on landlords. Though they may then seek to recover the costs via higher rents, or tenants will be willing to pay more/forced to do so by a more competitive market (eg if some landlords exit)

The Warms Home Plan has finally been published. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Ed Miliband has said that solar panels will be required on new homes "from this year" - suggesting this will come in earlier than the other changes in the Future Homes Standard (we're expecting 1-2 year transition period for most of the changes)

The Warm Homes Plan is (finally) out tomorrow. These look to be the main headlines, from the press release - alongside confirmation that the Government does not intend to set a deadline for phasing out gas boilers in existing homes.

Good illustration here of why Government is trying to remove powers from local planning committees. We should instead trust professional planning officers to determine applications, in line with local plans.

every provocateur who wangs on all the time about Britain being “broken” should be sent to an actual failed state or autocracy for a month as a learning experience, there’s no shortage of them

Interesting ideas here for supporting first time buyers with £12.5k cash in return for delaying their state pension by a year from @andrewlewinmp.bsky.social. We do need new ways to help people into the housing ladder. Would this work?

This article doesn't tell you much, as the trial isn't finishing until 2027 - but I'll be really interested to see the final results. A proper randomised controlled trial - where 125 people with recent experience of homelessness were given £2,000 & support and another 125 just got support.

Anyone complaining about solar panels taking up space needed for growing food needs to look hard at this chart. Solar panels are *massively* more efficient than biofuels.

I seem to have a large number of new followers overnight - a new exodus from X?

Temperatures have dropped. If you are worried about anyone who is rough sleeping in this freezing weather, here’s how to help.

Is anyone who works on carbon analysis and embodied carbon in particular able to tell me why when we look at whole life carbon for buildings, we assume they are demolished after only 60 years? Eg knowledge.futurehomes.org.uk/wp-content/u... But in fact we demolish <0.1% of 60y+ aged houses annually

Such is the Guardian's enthusiasm for bashing housebuilders, that they're now accusing them of successful lobbying against something the government has never indicated any intention whatsoever of doing (mandating battery systems in new homes) www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Happy new year. Here's a list of 25 good news stories from 2025. mashable.com/article/2025...

Sounds like the end of the 'fabric first' mantra being set out here. Electrifying homes is the way of the future, with solar panels, batteries and heat pumps being the focus of government subsidy.

How good a year do Britons say 2025 was for... Themselves personally Good: 36% Average: 35% Bad: 27% The UK Good: 6% Average: 24% Bad: 66% yougov.co.uk/society/arti...

This is a thoroughly ridiculous take on a projection of a (possible) few months of negative net migration. - There is no crisis. It'll reverse itself once the unusually large cohort of students leave. - We can change it if we want to (we're lucky to live in a country that many want to come to).

So the most likely people to have stolen the park geese to eat for Christmas are those from cultures that don't celebrate Christmas? 🤔

Suspect some female Tory MPs are quietly dying inside at this. When you’re so desperate to get in a bit of gratuitous foreigner-bashing that you find yourself arguing *against* preventative strategies that try to prevent sexual violence, ffs, what have you become?

Important article about the current mess with funding for energy saving measures - Government announced ending the current scheme last month, but details of the replacement scheme, via the Warm Homes Plan (promised by October) still aren't out. The supply chain can't plan or invest in this situation

Crucially - Lichfields estimate that limiting the policy to stations that already have at least two trains an hour each way cuts the potential number of new homes in half. If you included places that currently have an hourly service you could find land for 1.3m homes (instead of 632k).

Useful map here from @lichfieldsuk.bsky.social showing the top 60 travel to work areas (by productivity) where it's proposed housing will be allowed by default within "reasonable walking distance" of a station - it's quite a large proportion of England lichfields.uk/blog/2025/de...

There are *225* questions in this consultation 😬 Seriously - how does Government expect to get serious contributions on such a mammoth exercise?

Government is pushing ahead with plans to permit new housing near 'well connected' stations, even in green belts. This could be quite significant - there's a lot of potential land near stations, especially in the London green belt.

Other than this on social housing allocations - the new Homelessness Strategy seems mainly to be a long list of funding that had already been announced and things already known about. I'm struggling to find anything much new in it.

Some interesting detail in the new National Homelessness Strategy on social housing allocations - New guidance to be published, to ensure housing associations house the most vulnerable, take homeless referrals from councils and are transparent. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/693a6e...

Interesting article here questioning the sustainability credentials of rural eco homes theconversation.com/why-grand-de...

Does this win a prize for the worst Christmas card ever?

Government still non-committal on when the Future Home Standard (mandating new homes to be off-gas) will be finalised. It was originally to come into effect in 2025, but we don't even have the technical specification yet, nor a timetable. Thanks @maxwilkinson.bsky.social for pushing the issue.

Really good to see this research on social housing allocations published. Social housing is the most affordable, built with public subsidy so that it can house the poorest and most vulnerable. But some housing associations are refusing to let to those on the lowest incomes.

There's much debate in England currently about whether social landlords should be allowed to add another £2-3 a week to some rents, on top of the CPI+1% annual increase - around 6-7% in total. But the article here talks about annual rent increases of up to 12%+ in Scotland.

Interesting debate raised in this article about whether we should relax the minimum space standard for new flats - so that single buyers can afford a home of their own. Seems odd to me that we ban new 30m2 flats, but allow young people to rent just a room in a shared house instead.

I am consistently amazed the Building Safety Regulator isn’t a much bigger story. It’s brought house building in London to a total halt, but it’s also brought cladding remedy works to a halt, too. Which is costing leaseholders FORTUNES, halting sales, and leaving people living in unsafe buildings.

These figures are bleak - and nothing at all in the budget yesterday to address them. Instead Local Housing Allowance remains frozen.

Interesting chart here showing where the impact of the changes to salary sacrifice pension schemes will fall - not the poorest (don't earn enough to pay NI), and not much on the richest (only 2% NI is paid on income>£50k). So the middle earners stand to lose most.