Tag Archives: decentralisation

2020 – The year the housing was hit by a maverick algorithm 

By Andy Boddington | Sun 13th September 2020 - 12:00 pm

Alongside Planning for the Future White Paper (see previous article), ministers published without fanfare a second consultation on changes to the planning system. Council housing targets will be set centrally using a crude formula that distributes responsibility for the government’s ambition for 300,000 new homes a year round the country. But the formula will allocate more housing to higher priced areas such as the south and east, while reducing ambitions for the Northern Powerhouse. A ‘short-term’ waiver of S106 requirements for most small sites could cut affordable housing delivery by up to 20%. A quarter of affordable housing delivered will be for sale at a 25% discount at the expense of social and affordable rented homes. 

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 5 Comments
David Chadwick

Leaving London

By David Chadwick | Mon 21st January 2019 - 9:12 am

Britain is one of the most overcentralized countries in the Western world. Our political and financial institutions are concentrated in London, perpetuating regional inequality and overburdening the capital’s underfunded public services.

London might be open but it’s also full: strangers share bedrooms; commuters collapse on crowded trains, gentrification ravages local communities, savings accounts stay empty and the Westminster bubble remains as tight and cosy as ever.

There seems to be no end in sight to London-centrism. Jobs flow to London without serious consideration being paid to whether or not they might be better off elsewhere. For example, in 2015 George Osborne decided …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 17 Comments
NewsHound

Nick Clegg: £104 million investment is an important day for Hull

By NewsHound | Tue 8th July 2014 - 10:36 am

City HallWho’d have thought Nick Clegg would write for the Daily Mail? Well, actually, not THAT one, but the Hull Daily Mail about the Government’s £104 million investment in local infrastructure which will be spent on transport links, housing and flood defences. It’s a Liberal Democrat initiative to have local councils and communities decide where money is best spent – good old fashioned liberal decentralisation.

He talked about how he has put his vision into practice:

I wanted to see every part of Britain given more freedom than at the start of this

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , and | 5 Comments
David Boyle

Opinion: The next devolution?

By David Boyle | Wed 2nd July 2014 - 9:31 am

Manchester Town Hall ClockChange is in the air, or that is the implication of the strange alignment of George Osborne for the Conservatives and Andrew Adonis for Labour, whose new report on re-balancing the economy – not that he used those terms – was published on Monday.

If you add Michael Heseltine’s 2012 review into the mix – published with a full-page portrait of the great Liberal reformist Joseph Chamberlain (yes, I know he became something else) – then the shift towards serious devolution of economic power seems unstoppable.

Why has it …

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 4 Comments
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