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.

So the Times is recommending spending £500,000 on an indoor swimming pool, which will take £392,000 of your property value (total loss: £892,000) in order to save £2,500 a year? Not quite sure that's an attractive offer....

We welcome measures announced in today’s budget to support the housebuilding sector and reductions to the levies on electricity bills but call for more support for councils with the costs of homelessness. housingforum.org.uk/the-housing-...

I know there's a budget n all, but a huge CONGRATULATIONS to @mauricelange.bsky.social for winning the @thinkhouseinfo.bsky.social Early Career Researcher's Prize for his paper 'The past, present and future of public housebuilding in England'. www.thinkhouse.org.uk/about/early-...

Details of this now out - and it does indeed look like very good news - Government has listened to concerns and I don't think they really meant add £25k to cost of a new home, via massive taxes on the rubble and topsoil which is removed and then used to fill a former quarry!

Social landlords will be disappointed not to get the details of rent convergence today - the sector was hoping to be allowed to increase below-target rents at up to £3 a week, but will have to wait until January to find out if this is allowed.

Full budget document now out: www.gov.uk/government/p...

Reeves has just confirmed that she is scrapping the plans for huge increases in landfill tax - which could have added £25k to the cost of building a house. This is very good news for the housing sector.

If correct, this would be a much better move to encourage people to move to more carbon forms of heating (eg heat pumps).

What might we see in the budget for housing? Here's my personal list of what seems likely, possibly and unlikely.

Have seen lots of criticism but: - Expensive homes currently pay the least council tax, relative to value. This fixes that. - No cliff edges if it's only on the value above £2m. - Doesn't raise very much yet, but would do so in time if the £2m cap is frozen.

This is really important research - roll out of heat pumps and the Future Home Standard in new homes is currently held up by concerns from electricity suppliers that all-electric homes will draw too much power. If we've been over cautious about that, we should update our calculations.

Detail here on today's planning reforms: 1) Default permission for new homes "within reasonable walking distance" of train station, even on greenbelt 2) Government intervention if councils plan to refuse large sites 3) Review of statutory consultees questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-stat...

Government is planning changes to the planning system to streamline it: - Removing Sports England, The Gardens Trust & Theatres Trust as statutory consultees - Reducing the scope of statutory consultees - Measures to ensure they don't hold up planning applications. www.gov.uk/government/c...

This is particularly good news for people living in flats. Air to air heat pumps are particularly good for small properties, or if damp and mould is an issue. They can provide cooling too, which will help with overheating in flats.

Is the Telegraph economically illiterate? If you put a hefty charge onto higher value properties their price would go down, not up! www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

New planning reforms confirmed that allow Government to intervene if a large housing development would be otherwise refused by the local planning committee. www.thetimes.com/article/c471...

Renters’ Rights Act to come into effect from May - ending S21 evictions. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Couldn't agree more with Crisis here that "the solution to homelessness is housing". But acquiring housing that already exists doesn't create more homes. It just changes the landlord.

The GLA allocates is own share of the grant for London. And announced today, six northern mayors will also £7bn between them to allocate. (Greater Manchester, West Midlands, North East, West Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region and South Yorkshire)

UK brick deliveries are a useful proxy for new house building starts in the absence of monthly house building starts data & the latest data from the Department for Business & Trade (DBT) covers September 2025. (1/n) #ukhousing #ukconstruction

What are people's thoughts on this paper setting out a case for government grant on hybrid heat pumps? They're saying the heat pump can do 94% of the heat, but the gas backup helps in very cold weather. www.worcester-bosch.co.uk/img/PR/hybri... The figures here look quite compelling:

Niche blog post #1: what stamp duty statistics say about how many home purchases are for "additional" dwellings rather than primary homes jamesjgleeson.wordpress.com/2025/10/19/a...

The Government's Carbon Budget Delivery Plan was published yesterday. Confirms for the first time that the Future Homes Standard has been delayed - it was initially due to start in 2025, but still isn't published, and seems rollout is now from 2027. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6901d0...

British people welcomed Ukrainians into their homes, just 3 years ago.

So the Renters Rights Bill has finally passed. S21 evictions will soon be no more. A few reflections on the long road to get to this point 🧵

Fascinating chart here - that runs very much counter to the rhetoric we keep hearing about tax being too high - we actually tax the average earner quite a lot less than most comparable countries, in the UK.

Steve Reed on Radio 4 this morning is proposing that modular housing can be built on former military bases as an alternative to housing asylum seekers in hotels. Modular homes are built off-site in factories so can indeed be built quite quickly if you drive them through planning.

The problem with buying back properties to fix "the social housing crisis" is that it isn't *just* a social housing crisis. You're taking away useful first time buyer homes to make social homes, so it's a bit of a zero sum game. Really need to build more homes.

Not sure I agree with this - changes to property taxation need to be thought through, but his suggestion of publicly announcing a 12 month review into it would likely grind the housing market to a halt while everyone waits to see what will happen. www.thetimes.com/article/e895...

That would require him to be in parliament to ask it wouldn't it?