The UK Might Solve Its Housing Shortage by 2100
A root-and-branch reset of the planning system is required to break the logjam.
New build construction of high rise apartment buildings along South Dock at the heart of Canary Wharf financial district.
Photographer: Mike Kemp/In PicturesBritain needs to build a lot more houses. Few who have observed the country’s unaffordable home prices and soaring rents disagree. All it’s getting at present is political squabbling.
Members of the opposition Labour Party in the House of Lords succeeded last week in blocking a government proposal that would have eased environmental rules to enable the building of 100,000 new homes. The two main political parties, which agree on the need for more construction, traded insults over the outcome, with the ruling Conservatives condemning Labour as “blockers” for frustrating a plan that the opposition had decried as “reckless.”