Paul Smith

If you wondered why there's a viability crisis in the housing industry at the moment, here's your answer. House construction costs rose nearly three times as much as UK house prices over the five years to June 2026.

Whenever I am frustrated about land use regulation in California I take a deep breath and remember that England exists.

The English language is full of beautiful phrases, but “Australia collapse” is surely amongst the most beautiful of them all.

This is a belting read.

Has anybody done this yet?

Hearing unconfirmed reports that @andyburnham.bsky.social has asked Donald Trump if he’s ever played centre forward and, if so, would he like to sign for Everton as a free agent.

Jonn’s newsletter is great - I would definitely recommend it. And you get a signed book!

contrary to the most conventional of all conventional wisdoms, the "help to buy did nothing but shove up house prices duh" wisdom, it actually worked www.gov.uk/government/p... report from people putting a lot more work into the question, worth a breezy look at

Certainly not the headline, but just an astonishing story that illustrates why it's so difficult to get things done. If people demand a *second review* into allow staff in number 10 to copy and paste, after a demand from the PMs CofS, no wonder we can't build a high speed railway line.

Wow. Just, wow.

What a thread. 👌

For most of the last 20 years, it has been a given that building new homes is financially viable. For reasons including regulatory burdens and more general inflation, that is no longer the case. I've explained how that impacts planning for Housing Today. www.housingtoday.co.uk/comment/the-...

Great statistic by @pmsmith.bsky.social speaking to the difficult realities that the NPPF is easy to edit, and hard to enforce.

The National Planning Policy Framework is replaced more quickly than the time it takes to determine planning applications for new homes. Over the last five years, the average time between NPPF updates is 414 days. The median time to determine an outline application for new homes is 439 days.

Here’s something about the pre-application process and why, frankly, it’s a bit of a mess. But we can fix it! open.substack.com/pub/longwall...

This pre-application advice may not reflect the views of the Local Planning Authority.

What’s the difference between Leeds and the New Brighton Adventure Golf Course? Leeds doesn’t have a tram.

Proper cricket.

What a brilliant book this is by James Cheshire. Beautiful photos of some incredible maps and the stories behind them. Cost me a fortune in old maps from eBay though!

A quarter of young children now live in the private rented sector. In fact, children are now more likely than adults to do so. 🏠 More in our last Housing Outlook➡️ buff.ly/SNjZ77G

Two people tried to enter a screening of The Odyssey without buying tickets after hiding inside a miniature model of the Trojan Horse. 😂😂😂

Agree with every word of this excellent post but especially this www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com/p/my-p-hacki...

This is amazing. Why we’ve got the costs of delivering a trans-Pennine tunnel linking Manchester with Sheffield completely wrong. An affordable, transformative project in the North? Sounds like something @andyburnham.bsky.social might be attracted to. open.substack.com/pub/limbostr...

👏👏👏

Is “making a seasonal salad” really “design and technology”?

Our recent research showed that residential planning applications are taking 3.3 times longer to determine than in 2010. Here, I've explored what's driving that slowdown and why it matters beyond the simply inconvenience of delay - including some brand new data! open.substack.com/pub/longwall...

Everyone’s being much more polite on the X, fwiw.

I’m stuck inside the neoliberal paradigm! 🙌

If housing affordability is a supply problem, we’d expect the places building the most homes to be the most affordable - exactly what the data shows. No major US housing market has both high house prices and high build rates. There’s no reason to think England’s housing market is any different.