Do we need (do we have - HSE?) a NICE-style body that audits and signs off on proposed regulations or policy changes for health and safety outcomes *before* introduced. Gets to say if x regulation of buildings/cars etc. is better value than y treatment for outcome z. Govt needs advice and a shield.

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...

Great Americanised mangling of ‘Home Secretary’

Would he choose/be forced to resign straight away or try to set a timetable? (if he cared I’m guessing you’d aim for 2nd anniversary of the election or Party Conference). Six month leadership contest with collective responsibility sounds uhh … interesting.

Suspect a big reason Sadiq wants 2040 Olympics - or another World Athletics Championships - is to give him leverage vs West Ham over the London Stadium. Loss making and needs a £ new roof in 10years and plenty of upgrades. He’s over a barrel. If govt can pay it gives him lots more cards to play with

Fascinating - and life-changing for hundreds of thousands of families - topic where definitions and data and measurement limitations dictate your fortunes.

The impulse for this was mostly because of the little metal canisters everywhere. A littering problem. Could have been the first thing last govt used its Environment Act 2021 deposit scheme powers for: 10p each canister. Would quickly disappear from sight. (Should be the approach with vapes too)

A 20-second mid-game advert to keep a non-crown jewels sporting event on free-to-air is a tiny price to pay. Bigger picture is the unions could have got £100m+ going to Sky Sports/TNT but took a real terms cut to extend at £65m/yr. Meanwhile WRU finances so dire Ospreys are facing being shuttered.

9 out of Italy’s 17 Six Nations wins have now been against Scotland.

“Why can’t people just enjoy the character and charm of the Cotswolds without trying to turn their gardens into some kind of tacky Benidorm resort?” A wonderful report on David Cameron’s 6-year long attempt to secure permission for a pool in his back garden. www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/2583255...

A political PM under pressure might use this to announce £40bn to move MPs to Birmingham and the Lords to Manchester as an indirectly elected territorial chamber - made up of Mayors and FMs. No point moaning about the extremely worthwhile Pride in Place expansion not being front page news.

Another year of extra wind curtailment fees. Scottish govt will eventually consent but will probably have taken 2.5yrs rather than 1.5 years in England via NSIP where council wouldn't be able to reject.

Never heard of this but sounds pretty good.

If government wants to use higher rents to help fund the social housing sector, it would be much fairer to let all rents to go up a bit, rather than create this two-tier system where next door neighbours are paying very different rents for identical properties. (Plus added complexity of management)

Big fan of town councils. They reflect an actual, lived, local community compared to not-very-local districts that need made up names (Dacorum!). Needless to say Redcliff-Maud was a big fan of town councils to provide voice, reflect identity and provide some small community amenities.

This is a great paper based on that rarest of things: an actual (fleeting) English planning success story. Zero excuse for any council claiming a housing crisis to not have a knock-off version on the books by September. My only criticism is the cowardly dodge of ‘Croydon Facelift’ for its title.

Did not realise that the council tax second home premium potential revenue was included in MHCLG core spending calculation (i.e. assumed). Next stop should be MHCLG/HMT doing this with parking charges/workplace parking levy/congestion charges. Let councils blame govt for doing the right thing.

Think this will be when a scrum is reset, the most tedious passages of the game. Limited to one per half and potentially worth up to £250k each. Prospect of this revenue model helped ITV pip TNT for rights to the new Nations Championship.

Just vibes and contradictions the whole way down. New NPPF can't come soon enough.

Want to know what switching from development control to rules-based planning might look like in the UK? @mauricelange.bsky.social has numbers 👇 HT @stephenkb.bsky.social

Great programme, an even greater man. Transcends the best of the BBC, the best of journalism. The best of Britain.

Suspiciously high electricity bill? Helping millions to break a law they and the police believe to be pointless? Firestick server raids are the new cannabis farm busts. ‘Legalise Saturday 3pm match broadcasts!’

Depressing to watch the ghouls at FIFA and ICC (BCCI in a wig) bend World Cups so nakedly towards personal/political ambitions. England and Australia in cricket and UEFA and Conmebol in football should take their ball home and set something else up unless there’s change.

My review of @profkepickett.bsky.social's new book, "The Good Society" "If you’d asked Pickett in 2010 whether she’d have accepted this trade she’d presumably have jumped at it...But now, like most of the rest of us, she’s less than happy with the results." www.theguardian.com/books/2026/f...

The next set of mayoral elections will be more like a lottery as voters will have to guess who will make it into the Top Two and who they want/want to stop to be mayor. Lets have proper preferential voting now.

Potential for covering weak domestic rail connections is huge. Would deserve the misused and overused term transformative. Domestic Cornwall, Norwich etc in under an hour vs 4-5hrs at similar price.

Not the focus of this piece, but the forces merger is bad. Just incredible luck that the perfect scale fr mergers matches 1990s NUTS1 regions. Flies in the face of aligning devolved powers to improve services, accountability, and local revenue raising. All to improve IT procurement and middle mgmt?

Intrigued by the idea that Mexico (and Canada?) would consider joining an anti-US security bloc. First three letters of geopolitics are quite important. And the security we’d be offering Mexico is what exactly? Incredible news for UK defence spending, bad news for everything else if we’re serious.

Germany has 15mn e-bikes. UK 1mn. London needs to be thinking about e-bikes as seriously as big train schemes like Crossrail 1/2. Not just leave it up to Limebike. Call it CrossWheel or something. £2-3bn budget with 6:1 BCR.

🤔

Erling Haaland and Mo Salah paying £17m and £15m tax. This is why govt should get behind bigger football stadiums, and stand against moves to protect foreign billionaires from dipping into their fortunes to cover massive losses due to paying higher player salaries - 47% goes straight to HMT.

CMA blocking Sainsbury’s in 2019 screwed Asda up for no reason. Made North-South sense and Lidl and Aldi entry to UK should have meant it wasn’t a competition issue (and Morrisons could have expanded where it was). So sold to Issa brothers and private equity for less, asset stripped and neglected.

The high repayment thresholds are part of the problem. Means people turn 30 and think they’ve paid ‘nothing’ back. Would look bad on a Resolution Foundation chart, but I think people would be happier paying 5% of earnings over £10k.

Chelsea v West Ham makes sense as each side’s most natural, visceral derby. Should shake hands to agree on it. Every team should have one most hated local rival and it be mutual. Fulham v Brentford. Palace v Brighton. Millwall v Charlton. Watford v Luton. Poor old QPR.

Really good discussion this. Sounds like an excellent issue for Andy Burnham to take up on the Lovelace Labs, and Tracy Brabin for the National Data Library to Leeds. Probably much easier for govt to deliver - and quicker - than a tram.

Does look like UK was right not to sign up to SAFE on the conditions asked - sounds like most EU member states didn’t think they were reasonable either. Yet so many people reflexively thought the EU was right and UK weak or foolish to walk away.

New FA Cup Theme tune … or: - Winner gets CL spot - Semi-finals in Cardiff (or anywhere not Wembley) - Lower league side always plays at home

Good trend for UK if international visitors come and spend here (more tourist tax too). But bad for the rest of the country if it forces more forced overnight stays in London because getting back to Birmingham or Leeds is impossible. Just a waste of resources at that point.

Homicide (like all types of crime) is heavily concentrated in a small number of places – half of all homicides in England and Wales happen in six police-force areas. But where are different types of homicide most concentrated? 🧵

Two top stories on BBC News London happen to be about thieves on public transport getting punched followed up by some flavour of Broken Britain depending on your ideology.

‘It’s just greedy councils trying to make money!’ > ‘It’s a waste of public money!’ CAZs are intended to lose money quite quickly. A flaw with such high fixed costs. Should just be a congestion charge with an air quality impact multiplier. EV traffic and particulates still nasty externality to tame

Oh boy. Indian government will not like this. Feels like an area where even stronger autopilot - with divergence requiring two-person override or something - could help.

As potential leading indicators go this seems pretty good (but only for England outside London, unfortunately).

Amazing quotes in here. What is he thinking? Surely any leadership strategy will require the support of Labour members and MPs who won’t be liking the sore loser look here. Also, won’t his strategy need Starmer to hold on until he can get a seat? Don’t see how this helps him at all.

The reporting on this is frustrating: - It's the same deadline for private as for social landlords. - The government consulted last year on either 2035 or 2037 as the deadline. - Around 2.4 million private rented homes are below the new standard and it will cost around £26.5 billion to fix them ..

Had not realised Mahmood blocked police devolution in Wales until the Eluned Morgan interview on Today. Does not seem terribly smart thing to do to a Welsh Labour FM in the run up to Senedd elections you’re trying to avoid a wipeout in.

National policing for certain functions makes total sense. But I’m not sure if efficiency of merging into 10-12 mega forces outweighs 30-odd forces coterminous with and accountable to mayors. Let people vote - and pay - for more bobbies on the beat/neighbourhood police stations etc if they want.

Related to getting outmanoeuvred, has Burnham built any sort of actual machine in GM? Definitely looks from the outside like he has the coattails and patronage powers to build up a bloc of MPs, cllrs, CLPs and union branches to take a ‘GM Labour’ line, whatever that might be.

My eldest is in school now but there was a year, when I took a redundancy payment, where my taxable income rising by 1p would have resulted in my disposable income falling by £17,000, a 1.7m% marginal tax rate

Transmission boundary constraints are now on the map! ⛔ I've finally got around to adding the NESO transmission boundaries to my renewables map, as well as the status of how constrained each boundary is. It's all based on the NESO day-ahead constraints data so it's more of a forecast.