The U.K. is short of homes. We have often agreed here that much lower numbers of migrants would help reduce the shortage. The danger now is the new government may continue with the old government’s high migration policy and perhaps add to it with new safe routes and an amnesty for illegals. This makes expanding the private rented sector even more important. Public sector budgets are not going to stretch to building many more Council houses.
The government plans to increase the protections for tenants, extending the past governments plans. Whilst this may be good news for those who have a long term tenancy, it is bad news for those needing to find a house to rent or needing to renegotiate an expiring arrangement.
There is likely to be a further reduction in homes to rent as landlords sell up or find less regulated uses for their property than letting it out to someone for their home. This will increase rents again and leave people in need of a home scurrying round when a tenancy does become available. Government needs to get to a balanced regulatory system ,protecting tenants against bad landlords but leaving landlords with sufficient rights over their property to make it a worthwhile investment.
A better private rented policy needs to be allied to helping the building industry train enough skilled staff and invest in sufficient building materials capacity to expand new homes output.There needs to be an increase in new homes to rent as well as to buy.
August 3, 2024
Indeed, alas with Osborne’s landlord tax grabs, over regulation and the dire Gove the Con-socialists had a damaging war on landlords. They also preferred to get people in to debt for largely duff and worthless degrees. This rather than funding people to learn skills in the building trades, engineering… Even worse they by their serial manifesto ratting have now delivered even worse to come from Starmer and Rayner.
A good interview with Farage (Triggernometry – my big plan to rescue Britain) – The universities – Madrasas of Marxism – More multimillionaires left britain last year than any other country thanks to Hunts vast tax grabs amd attacks on Non Dom even worse to come – Real National debt 2.7 trillion nearly tripled since Cameron in 2010 – he supports James Cleverly it seems, I wonder what the motivations are here? To encourage some Tory MPs to defect? Cleverly always strikes me as being pleasant enough but rather dim.
August 3, 2024
A yes man and thick. Civil servants dream minister. Cleverly also wants ECHR therefore cannot want control over immigration, the public will reject him. Braverman was the Tory party’s only hope, but there are too many pro EU one nation socialists. They form 3/4 of the MPs the Tory party is done.
August 3, 2024
Indeed. It’s a pointless leadership contest when ALL of the candidates aren’t……………….conservatives!!
All are one nation Liberal Tory’s with a couple of pretendy ones for public display NOT actual policy!!
The problem the Tory’s have is after 14 years WE ALL KNOW IT!!!
August 3, 2024
Well even if they did elect Kemi or Priti what can they do when about 75% of the 121 “Conservative” MPs are socialist, pro EU, net zero zealots, pro high immigration levels and most even think the Covid Vaccines were safe. Sunak even assures the house they were – no one sensible, numerate and who has looked at the data does!
August 3, 2024
Perhaps Farage wants Cleverly so as to bury the Con-Socialist Party? Or perhaps to kill his chances of becoming leader.
Clearly no one should condone these violent protests/riots.
But when I listened to Starmer’s appallingly misjudged “you all far right scum and we will continue with our two tier policing”. This will continue to come from the police, Mayors, Starmer, Evette Cooper, the justice system, social services… this is exactly what I expected to happen. Has anyone been charged in the Manchester Airport incident yet? Needless to say Starmer did not even mention the Leeds riot. No did he have any hesitation in prejudicing any potential prosecutions of all the people Starmer branded far right criminals. Two tier anti-free speech Starmer and Cooper are a disaster.
August 3, 2024
If those tight-arsed millionaires are leaving due to Non-Dom reduction, what countries offer a better deal for their earnings, and how can they readily move liability? Do they register companies to let them move base of income?
How many illegals are housed in multi-occupation premises, all expecting to be given, yes given, a house in due course? All of them becoming a new problem on housebuilding needed.
August 3, 2024
Well perhaps these “tight-arsed” millionaires think that they will invest or use their money rather better than the government does. Rather hard not to in my experience. Surely it is then rather more moral to use the money themselves creating jobs by investing wisely – rather than let the government waste most of it.
How can they move liability? Well depends where the income is coming from. But they can nearly always avoid any higher rates. As to where? Italy is nice has a tax cap of £80,000 and v. little death tax – so why pay £10M in the UK then 40% of total assets on death? Other choices IoM, Channel Islands, Ireland as Non Dom – Malta or Monaco if you like it warm, Switzerland with a deal, Andora, Cyprus, Estonia… or plenty further afield.
August 3, 2024
I loved the new use of ‘moral’. Shakespeare ”Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.”
August 3, 2024
The economy would be far, far, far less efficient if people took Shakespeare duff advice. People with spare money should indeed lend it to people who need it for sensible investments, factories, farming, houses to live in when sensible to do so. Everyone is better off that way. Similarly people with spare rooms, houses, land should rent those out too.
August 3, 2024
I have always found James Cleverly decent and clever. His problems stem from being a politician first so will pull his punches and he does err on the side of being whet.
August 3, 2024
If he is clever he hides it very well indeed. Anyone clever will surely understand the net zero is total lunacy so is he clever but just lying on this issue? Or just not clever?
A posh private school and then when on to “hospitality management studies at the Ealing College of Higher Education” it seems. But I am all in favour of practical skills – brighter than John Major or Prescott perhaps?
August 3, 2024
He, like others buys into net zero because it is politically expedient and cost him nothing.
August 3, 2024
“buys into” or does he actually “believe” in this deluded religion.
August 3, 2024
I know very little about the economics, tax and regulatory environment of rented private housing. But more widely I sense that people are crystallizing capital gains by selling assets now ahead of the increases expected to be announced in the October budget. This includes owners of second homes and property owned to rent. In this environment and the change in the balance of power between the parties why should anyone take the risk of investing in rented housing?
August 3, 2024
Indeed the liebour government will increase migration making the situation worse bit we are beginning to see the people revolting against mass immigration. If two tier tier thinks he can get away with labelling the indigenous population right wing nutters whilst bowing to those with protected characteristics, the game is up. We have enough housing bur too many people.
August 3, 2024
Well the only solutions are more houses/flats, fewer people or some tents/caravans and shanty towns perhaps.
August 3, 2024
Not necessarily. I’m expecting the Single Person Occupancy 25% discount on Council Tax to be removed. Householders to be nudged to take a lodger and then coerced into it.
August 5, 2024
Ooo, I had not thought of that one, forcing the low-pension elderly to downsize to an A-band property.
August 3, 2024
The immigrants have trashed vast swathes of our country, including many many homes. Journalists are posting film on YouTube.
I am tired of being afraid in my own country – the only one I have and ‘which I love’ more than those who arrive and bully their way in.
My cousin once removed, whose mother was born in the U.K. of 100% British parents, was born after 1983 and therefore ‘automatically a British citizen’, has had to supply original documentation to the Passport Office. They keep asking for more (fathers birth certificate which is unobtainable because in SA you can only obtain a copy of your own birth certificate and the father is deceased and not the source of his claim anyway) – and have threatened to ‘destroy the original birth certificates, marriage certificates etc’ already supplied if they are not ‘satisfied and award him citizenship’. On the strength of the same documents his brother has his passport.
This level of abuse and threat is unacceptable – but of course he is a young white man, and British so obviously ‘far right’. Are they instructed to kept this demographic out of the country at all costs?
August 3, 2024
There’s no respect for property private and public with litter of all sorts left outside houses,waste food,old beds, broken cupboards and worse left in entries.,rats are left to wander in broken down dirty backyards with female occupants doing nothing all day because they don’t know how to clean and organise.Their level of hygiene is appealing because they are not used to personal cleanliness.
August 3, 2024
It would undoubtedly be helpful to get immigration back under control. You cannot backload the population with a town the size of Nottingham every year without consequences. I see no prospect of this Labour government doing it or even wishing to do it.
Public housing in my part of the UK seems to be in the hands of Housing Associations. Whether such HAs are viable businesses with capital for future investment or are dependant on government handouts, I know not. Affordable public housing is what is required, adjacent areas where the people work. Your guess is as good as mine as to where Labour get the capital for 1.5 million homes. It will not come from the private sector without tax and regulatory incentives when Labour’s thinking is more tax and regulation. It will not come from the building industry who prefer to drip feed the private owner market, that for myriad other government failures is shrinking fast. People do not have the money to enter private ownership.
The solution is to ruthlessly stop immigration. Shipping a few hundred to West Falkland to build the labour camp would send the right message to Calais. Follow with a trawl of illegals already in the UK, offering the option of deportation to a country of their origen and choice or road building in WF.
Factory manufacture housing to a high specification, on an automotive scale. Erect them on largely grey field sites in existing urban areas. Prioritise the indigenous population as clients. This properly handled could become self financing. You would need to find a minister with the talents of Lord Beaverbrook to set it up and run it. What he did for Spitfires needs to be replicated for housing.
You are already begining to see the result of failure in all the above. People do not appreciate having their culture destroyed about their ears. Nor do they accept that protesting such makes them right wing extremists , though lunatic elements are encouraged. I would like to sound positive, but so far mr flip flop and his disperate band of brothers give no encouragement to such generosity.
August 3, 2024
Let’s not talk as if Labour has thought through its election promises. Because of its labour shortage, all that the construction industry can do is bank the huge amounts of rural land local authorities will now have to award them under the new housing target regime. The big numbers in the Planning Applications granted will make the headlines for the next few years, accompanied by impressive pictures of building sites and houses under construction. Numbers on housing completions will be harder to find.
August 3, 2024
Ag,
Falkland people should not be forced to have these French criminals. Oil and gas exploration for the Falklands to bring wealth jobs and prosperity to the islands and UK.
Remote Scottish island turned into a penal colony would suffice. In the papers yesterday 92 French invading criminals suing govt for poor treatment! Our taxes paying for their spurious legal claims as well!! Deport them!
Last week the Eastern European criminals who stole £54 million from DWP granted £2 million in legal fees! Deport them.
August 4, 2024
Hope,
There are about 200 people on West Falkland and a lot of sheep. A military prison run by the army would be a close to home customer. The point of it is to deter the economic migrants in Calais and give the estimated 2 million illegals roaming the UK a reason to leave when confronted.
Immigration and its fellow traveller multiculturism (a euphenism for separate developement), by sheer weight of numbers is destroying British culture. That is what the man and woman on the 39 bus is protesting about. The fact that a few mindless thugs use said protest as an excuse to riot only reduces the impact of protest, and allows amoral politicians to blame it all on right wing extremism, when in fact the protest is the result of political failure since about 1997. If anyone has a right to say I warned you, it is the late great Enoch Powell.
Legal aid is due a massive revue, but when the largest profession in Parliament is lawyers do not anticipate it. Legal aid is the ICU of the otherwise failing end of the legal profession.
August 5, 2024
£2m in legal fees, what!
You’ve made me wonder how much the cost of legal aid has gone up in the last couple of decades if we’re allowing this.
August 3, 2024
Agricola:
Absolutely right! I just wish the Politicians would do it.
August 3, 2024
“There is likely to be a further reduction in homes to rent as landlords sell up or find less regulated uses for their property than letting it out to someone for their home.”
A few years ago I decided renting out my home was not an option, because of the ever-expanding regulation (under the Tories; goodness knows how much further Labour will go).
Now my worry is Labour (as the Tories themselves threatened), will turn on “less regulated” forms of letting. In my case I do Airbnb from 2 spare bedrooms. It’s inconvenient but provides a vital supplement to my miniscule pension. It also provides a place for (mainly European) tourists to stay, and for contract workers needing a short term place to stay near a local job. All bring money to me and the local economy.
I forsee Labour interfering in this market too. In which case they may shut me down, or I may have to shut down… and try to save on heating or whatever, to make up for my shortfall in income.
Regulation regulation regulation.
August 3, 2024
Airbnb short holiday lets are already very restricted in London and entirely banned in several European cities.
August 3, 2024
More from the Farage interview – if you are young in the UK you are not going to get a state pension – just forget it! Also “inflation is a disease of money caused by governments”
My daughter is shortly 18 & gets her Gordon Brown baby bond – it has only just doubled in value over 18 years a return of 1% PA above inflation. A shame a foolish Brown did not give her £250 of gold which would today be worth about 6 times & more not merely double. Instead he sold the UK’s gold off at about 1/8 of its current value 25 years back. See the excellent Gordon is a Moron book. The baby bonds were clearly an evil (should be illegal) attempt to buy votes for Labour using tax payers money.
It is not so much that gold has gone up, but that the UK governments for these 25 years has chosen to hugely debased the £1 and waste £ trillions too.
Note that had this 2x gain been taxable at CGT rates it would have actually lost money over 18 years in real terms. What brilliant investment managers we have in out financial services sector. I wonder how much they grabbed out of my daughters “investment” over 18 years. I assume about 2/3 of it.
August 3, 2024
Ridiculous. My grandson turned 18 this year. His parents added first £25/month, then £50/month to the original £250 he had got from G.Brown in 2005. Then at the end of 2013 as the Family Investment Company had advertised it the parents moved this Child Investment Trust into a Junior ISA and continued this £50/month investment. A total of roughly £10k had been invested over these 18 years. Following good advice available in some financial media these last ten years money had been put in ETFs and has grown to £30k now transformed into a regular ISA, meaning that there has not been any CGT.
And for what I know it was possible to limit the annual company fee to about £50/year and the ETF entrance fees to be between 0.1 to 0.4% depending on which ETF was chosen.
I wonder who’s the moron in LL’s story.
August 3, 2024
Well I did not add any money or even bother with it really. I just assumed the tax payers £250 might at least cover a decent 18th Birthday Party. Had it matched my personal investment or been invested wisely it would have grown to about X 6 times not X 2! Hardly enough for a decent dinner for her and friends. Berkshire Hathaway has gone from $60 to $428 over the 18 years.
August 3, 2024
You were rude to me yesterday in a totally uncalled for way.
And my response disappeared!
(In my comment I was actually asking the same questions that you fired at me…so apparently neither of us had the answer?)
Now LL is in the crosshairs.
I have no doubt that your two varying experiences meet somewhere in the middle.
August 3, 2024
£50 fees PA on a £250 investment!
August 3, 2024
Yes but I did not put any extra money (I had better things to do with it within my businesses). Even so just Browns £250 to £510 over 18 years is totally pathetic. So why did Brown force taxpayers to invest in these duff schemes.
Oh yes I remember he thought using tax payer money in this idiotic, immoral and evil way would buy his party votes!
August 3, 2024
Wow so you turned £250.00 into £30,000.00 in 18 years. You are a genius and Rachel needs you. Apply at 11 Downing Street. They are really really into magicians.
August 3, 2024
No they paid extra £25 or £50 PCM for 18+ years too!
August 4, 2024
Yes – but that seems not to have dawned on Hefner. He claims it was all the gift of Gordon.
If I had put in £1,000 a month too I could have ended up with even more impressive figures. Is he saying they only thought of saving for the child because Gordon put in the first payment?
Did he call you the moron? Wow!
August 3, 2024
What are people to do if they have, say, and overseas posting? Formerly they would have happily let their home safe in the knowledge that they would get possession back when they returned. If so-called “no fault evictions” are prevented, i.e. a landlord recovering possession at the end of the contractually agreed term, what then? When will politicians learn that every time the interfere in the private rental market all they do is decrease supply and increase rents?
August 3, 2024
Indeed. Politician are very often moronic or evil or corrupt or a combination of these.
August 3, 2024
Leave it empty but then you get squatters or vandals!
August 3, 2024
They are not even aloud to maintain a bank account in the U.K. if they have an overseas posting.
August 3, 2024
Not allowed by whom?
August 4, 2024
I understand it is part of the anti-terrorism Act. It might have been amended once the repercussions became obvious even to the politicians on the front bench.
A friend, an accountant was telling us yesterday that his daughter has started work and it took a year to get a bank account opened for her.
There seems to be a lot of oil needed on the banking system JR.
Better get fracking.
August 3, 2024
Not true. Only Barclays had such restrictions for a while, most other banks did not.
August 3, 2024
How is the government going to achieve its huge house building targets? You can’t force developers to build. My son, who is a project manager in the construction industry, tells me there is a chronic and continuous labour shortage and that, on the very large projects he is involved in, the vast majority of the labour force are not from this country.
With developers holding back land to keep demand and prices high, and with the shortage of skilled labour, how on earth does the Labour government think it is going to get 300,000 houses a year built? That’s 829 houses built, sold and occupied every day if the year.
August 3, 2024
Mike
Afraid Tony Blair has a lot to answer for, he scrapped all the Technical collages and turned them into faux universities,.
Woking with your brain to use your hands, skilled, semi skilled, or even unskilled was almost seen as a crime, when you should really be going to university to perhaps end up as a shop assistant is much better, although nothing wrong with that either if that is what floats your boat.
Hence few UK properly taught skilled construction workers left in the uk under the age of 60.
August 3, 2024
Indeed the Blair/Brown era was a total disaster. Any positives at all? Note that I can find.
David Starkey Talks is very good on this topic.
August 3, 2024
Labour are simply following Conservative policy so no change is possible. The banning of so-called “no fault evictions” (which are not evictions at all) is a bizarre idea – why should it be illegal for me to let a property on a 2 year fixed-term to a tenant who wants to rent it on a two-year fixed term ? As you note the effect of all of this will be fewer rental properties and higher rents. If Khan gets his way in London and is allowed to impose a rent cap then both effects will be higher (as recently shown in Berlin).
August 3, 2024
Thomas Sowell covers the topic very well in his books.
He cites the examples where rent caps and over-regulation reduced the supply with the inevitable result that those seeking to rent were priced out of the market, the area, and even the State.
Fundamentals of economics always win through against idealistic short term wheezes.
August 3, 2024
Just as the laws of physics will win out over the mad net zero, CO2 devil gas and renewables religions.
August 3, 2024
So who wrote Starmer’s let’s pour petrol on the rioting fire “you are all far right thugs & criminals” and “we will continue with our two tier policing regardless” speech”? Whomever it was clearly should resign.
Even if it was not Starmer he obviously should have read it before delivering it- so he should go too. Ah – but then we would perhaps get Tory scum, scum, scum Angela Rayner! Would she be even worse? Hard to tell.
August 3, 2024
Lammy comments about Trump as well. Hardly govt of service or for All. Clearly lies. I also saw the chief constable who allowed tearing down of Coulson statue to be rolled down the road half a mile and dumped in river, while police looked on and watched next to Home Office spokesperson Cooper. The same one defending the protesters motives against Coulson. The one Patel had a word with. How could the public have faith in any of these people, govt or chief constables, political policing ?
August 3, 2024
@ Hope – but Starmer said he would respect us all – violent criminals, rapists, murderers & even Tory Scum, Scum, Scum it seems. But not it seems far right criminals who do not like two tier policing or children being knifed to deaths it seems now.
August 4, 2024
What we do want is the Courts to sit 24 hours so that boat people can be brought before them and removed from the country before they lay their head on a pillow.
But that was not possible.
The right to fight is a very important one. Britain has not been allowed to fight for its survival since WWII.
Sunderland I know well, it is jam packed it’s asylum seekers and the locals believe it is punishment for voting Brexit. Their women are followed and manhandled on the streets. Their property is falling in value. Their children are not safe.
They are Labour voters, and so thank God there is a Labour government – leaving them in no doubt as to the identity of their abusers.
It should never have come to this. Powell said ‘the people will win in the end’. I believe he knew we would have to fight for Britain, OUR homeland.
Tomorrow we will have thousands of Tommy Robinsons.
August 3, 2024
LL, just so.
Time and tide see off the impermanent, even if the soft headed call it ‘sustainable’
August 3, 2024
The building industry already has a massive labour shortage, and not just in Britain. People voted for a Labour Party campaign that said they would build lots more housing. But has Labour said where they will find the extra workforce required? I doubt if they will come from Europe, as they did before Brexit. So whose countries will we raid for construction workers, like we raided the global South for NHS staff? I don’t recall any Conservatives getting their opponents to explain where a Labour government would find the workforce needed to carry out the promises dangled before the electorate.
August 3, 2024
No. 9.7 million voted Labour. Fewer than in 2019 and much fewer than in 2017. The vast majority of people did not vote for Labour. Who wants the country carpeted with housing? Especially considering ‘they’ rarely build the schools, doctors surgeries, power stations, reservoirs and increase in grid capacity needed.
August 3, 2024
Anyone voting LibDem or Green nationally was aware they were letting in a Labour government, Mike, and in any case their parties also favoured lots more new housing. This expansion was always going to take place mainly in England. According to House of Commons Library figures, 13.2 million people in England voted – whether or not they realised it – for Labour’s housing agenda. As opposed to 9.9m who voted Conservative or Reform.
I deplore this as much as you do, but I also deplore the failure of the opposition to bring home to voters what they were actually voting for.
August 4, 2024
We knew what we were doing. The Tories had to be sacked. We have tried death by 1,000 cuts for too long. It needs to be brought to a head and resolved before we re the minority and can’t resolve it in our favour.
August 3, 2024
With respect Sir John, I don’t think we’ve agreed that “much lower numbers of migrants would help reduce the shortage.”
Any level of immigration is only going to make the problem worse UNLESS it is reduced to the point where significantly more are leaving than arriving and the Establishment isn’t going to allow that to happen. We build around 200,000 houses a year and there is already a huge disparity between the number of houses available and the number of people who want/need one. I very much doubt that Labour will be able to significantly increase the number of Little Boxes Made of Ticky Tacky delivered each year.
The Not-a-Conservative-Government (Gove) started the war on Landlords; Labour will simply continue it. They wanted small Landlords pushed out of the market and everything they did was intended to do just that. Apart from the social engineering objectives, they really don’t want “the peasants” to have a source of income which doesn’t either rely on working – and therefore paying National Insurance – OR handouts from the Government.
They want dependant little serfs. So much easier to control.
Reply Fewer migrants eases the shortage. Net outflows would abolish the shortage.
August 3, 2024
‘ Little Boxes Made of Ticky Tacky’
An American Communist on ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’. He had already been questioned by the House Un- American Activities Communism and sentenced to a year in jail in 1961. Then we see him on one of the most popular shows on the telly at the time. Funny old world.
August 3, 2024
‘ Little Boxes Made of Ticky Tacky’
An American Communist on ‘Sunday Night at the London Palladium’. He had already been questioned by the House Un- American Activities Committee and sentenced to a year in jail in 1961. Then we see him on one of the most popular shows on the telly at the time. Funny old world.
August 3, 2024
reply to reply…although few will disagree that lower immigration is good, zero even better. Ironically this Government has every likelihood of increasing the outflow from UK, thus a positive towards the house building target!
August 4, 2024
MT
Indeed and the problem then will be the ones with the money leave with their money, to be replaced by those who have nothing and require support ,!
No joined up thinking as usual
August 3, 2024
Sir John, everyone that has looked at the scarcity of homes available at affordable cost has concluded the same thing.
The demand is far too great to be met by building more properties. We do not have sufficient capacity or indeed desire to build the 500.000 homes/year needed to meet the decay of existing stock plus the increasing demand from migration at over one million new customers every year.
The only sane option is to reduce demand.
When you can tell us how that is going to happen we will all be very attentive and fascinated by the Reform needed in our country.
Reply I have regularly pressed for much lower migration levels and set out to Ministers how to do that.This government shows no interest in cutting legal migration though so far has not unpicked the helpful changes to criteria the last government introduced in January as a result of some of us lobbying for big changes.
August 3, 2024
Thank you Sir J. The puzzle for most of us is why are government of what ever colour, so desirous of open ended migration, when the impact of that policy is so patently negative to national wellbeing?
August 3, 2024
“Negative to national well being”
That’s the point.
They want to destroy nation states and achieve THEIR concept of utopia.
Think of that old happy-clappy soft drink advert.
Happy, happy, happy and fully controlled.
Not loyalties, no allegiences.
Lotus eaters.
August 3, 2024
Migration Watch
Lord Green explained, “the total for the last two calendar years was very nearly one and a half million.” This surge is not accidental but the result of specific decisions by the previous government to cave in to pressure from powerful lobby groups such as universities, corporations and the care sector.
Our nation is facing an unprecedented challenge born of the sheer scale of current net migration. And while Labour can justifiably blame the Tories for making the bad situation inherited from Labour 14 years ago worse, they must not duck the responsibility that now falls to them to address the problem head-on. We must say, so far, their response has been unbelievably lax.
Lord Green’s speech is a call for “courageous leadership” from our new government. It’s time for a clear commitment to bring net migration down to as close as possible to [or well below] 100,000 a year – a goal that 80% of the public favour. This isn’t just about numbers; it’s about preserving the integrity and future of the United Kingdom.
August 3, 2024
Reply to reply
Well either way, with either of tweedle dum or tweedle dee running things, immigration remains un-cut. I suspect the answer is eventually a harder line by people making laws who do what they say. For the moment, people know that the country has gone out of the frying pan and into the fire with Labour via a vis immigration. Hence the unrest.
For a start, we need to agree that many ordinary people in urban areas of all creeds and colours are sufficiently concerned to protest. Some of those are becoming violent because they believe their grievances warrant violence, which of course they don’t. But silent or vocal protest, with people showing their lack of support for the invasion is warranted and necessary.
The need for more houses-larger rented sector – are just secondary effects. We should be tackling the need at its root cause rather then building more, regulating more etc. etc.
August 3, 2024
Furthermore the whole practicability and economics of building far more houses to house people who can’t/won’t pay for them or build them is questionable. There are neither the trades nor the money to do this, and as costs escalate under higher demand this will show up. Ordinary people will be out protesting when their assets are stolen by Labour to pay for all this. It will end as badly as ever with Labour.
August 3, 2024
Test
August 3, 2024
The governing class will eventually start a house building program but those who will be awarded tenancy will not be indigenous citizens of ancient standing but irregular migrants. The nation is being realigned and remodeled right in front of our very eyes. This repugnant politics of replacement is designed to stoke even greater levels of discontent.
We’re living under a regime and that regime filters all public policy through the prism of power, the power to destroy and rebuild for political ends
Wokingham and other places will be next in line for demographic realignment and Labour will use new build housing estates filled packed with ‘irregular migrants’ to change the demographic makeup of those areas.
The Tories had the chance to expose this vileness in 2010. they chose self-preservation over national interest
August 3, 2024
The difficulty will lie in just where are the areas to build the new housing estates in Wokingham.?
Acceptabliity has been stretched to breaking point all ready.
I suppose the planners might want to build on the small hospital site, on carparks, on remaining recreation fields!
August 3, 2024
Have you read the council’s Local Growth Plan the public were consulted on a couple of years ago, MT? It may answer your question.
August 3, 2024
Spiteful, vengeful, abhorrent.
Tory councils, I have read,will be forced to take more houses than Labour ones.
( was it 6x more or something?)
No hiding place.
August 3, 2024
Indeed that very sounds likely.
August 3, 2024
My lad’s now a senior research chemist and can finally afford to move out of student digs and rent a house @ £1400pcm.
The estate he’s on is full of the newly arrived who can barely speak English let alone have the jobs that could pay £1400pcm in rent.
The country is now on the verge of bursting into flames this weekend. This did not come about within two weeks of a Labour government.
If you are young and have the ability then emigrate.
August 3, 2024
Indeed. People have had enough of the lying deceitful political Uni party class at Westminster. The unrest this weekend is a direct result of the Uni Party ignoring the wishes of the English people and imposing foreign cultures and behaviours on us, whilst legislating to make us second class citizens in our own country. English people don’t have any protected characteristics but just pick up the bill. Shame on all of them that it has come to this!
August 3, 2024
Exactly, my son is a junior doctor in London his small room in a shared flat is £1200 PCM!
August 3, 2024
Didn’t we used to call this sector Council Houses?
August 3, 2024
But at least people who stayed with a rent-book from the Council ensured income for decades and became a cash-cow having repaid way over initial sunk-cost.
August 5, 2024
Lots of genuine low-income people in Council property get housing benefits after retirement. Their rent/council tax combined is a lot lower than private rents in the same area.
For example:
https://www.denbighshire.gov.uk/en/housing-homelessness-and-landlords/social-housing/rents-and-charges.aspx
3 bed house/bungalow £123.97 per week.
The median rent for new social housing tenancies in England in 2022/23 was £93 per week, rising slightly from £89 the previous year. Rents in London were £127 per week, nearly a quarter (27%) higher than the English average of £93 per week.6 Mar 2024
Social housing lettings in England, tenancies: April 2022 to March 2023 GOV.UK
August 3, 2024
Last night a mob torched a police station in Sunderland, also setting fire to cars on the street outside in scenes reminiscent of Belfast at the height of the Troubles
Everybody has condemned the worst violence on our streets since Mark Duggan was shot dead by armed police in 2011 – except Farage and his Reform company.
Farage should get off the fence and condemn street violence in our cities immediately. If he fails to do so, we should be asking, why not?
reply I saw a statement from him condemning the violence
August 3, 2024
JR, this post is clearly untrue. I understood under your rules false personal attacks would be deleted.
Reply They are. This was urging a public figure to an action he had already carried out as I made clear on the posting. I let it stand as it tells us something important about the critic.
August 3, 2024
@Hope
I get personal attacks against my well-researched pro-renewable energy and informative posts all the time. Frequently they are moderated if they disagree with our kind host’s pro-fossil fuel and anti-BBC views
“Eco-loony” “Eco-nutter” “Eco-clown”
SJR rarely misses an opportunity to let these insults stand
August 3, 2024
These are not ‘insults’ but accurate descriptions of your eccentric statements. Still heating the orchard house?
August 3, 2024
He already has condemned it Sakara. Perhaps you should do some basic checks before posting your obvious prejudices.
August 3, 2024
Certain media don’t want to show Reform as a normal decent Party by its condemnation!
August 3, 2024
It is vital to preserve and promote a flexible house rent market. For example, people moving house need to be able easily to find a tenancy; this is particularly important when they have to, or choose to, move a long distance.
Preventing ‘no fault evictions’, ie. contract terms, will destroy the market.
August 3, 2024
Surely the worst violence was slightly off the street where three little girls were stabbed to death by a young man of non-local extraction.
Why don’t you condemn that, SG?
August 3, 2024
Farage does indeed rightly condemn the violence, he also rightly condemns the two tier policing and the many other causes of the dissatisfaction warm hotel for you but not for freezing OAPs who paid in. I also condemn Starmer’s moronic fuel on the fire “all are far right criminals” speech the other day. Predictable results – mind you he stops work at 6.00 on Fridays and is off on holiday soon I understand.
August 4, 2024
I suspect with this statement Two Tier Keir has significantly boosted Reform’s chances in the 98 Constituencies where they came second to Labour.
August 3, 2024
I thought that since whichever govt. actively incentivised the buying up and renovating of countless properties ( thus restoring the housing stock and causing a house price boom) the govt.s had swung round with draconian taxes and disincentives to get rid of landlords.
Poor landlords…heroes to zeros in a few years!
Nice package of done-up houses to hand over by the street load to certain global finance companies.
It is no longer worth having any second property because that is now frowned upon in moral outrage and stymied by council tax.
It was all a very devious and cunning plan IMO.
August 3, 2024
Capitalists don’t want to invest in property to rent if government make it a pain for them to do so (there are easier and less stressful way of making money with one’s financial assets).
However, renters don’t want to rent if they feel landlords are making a real financial gain out of it – and that the property is therefore not like a home but just somewhere to stay. And if people experience this, then they are far less productive than they could be (and so cost the tax payer more in social security and / or visits to hospital because of depression / poor eating / poor exercise etc).
Since capitalism can’t solve this problem and we don’t want socialists spending lots of public money on this, then what is the solution? How do you square the circle?
Government needs to build lots of cheapish, small homes (but not ugly, tall tower blocks) in brown areas, with lots of trees and shrubs, and either sell them and / or rent them (making a profit to cover costs and a bit more). No other solution.
Reply. Big issues include bloated public borrowing, upwards pressure on land prices unless you are advocating confiscation, shortage of builders, public sector inefficiencies, likely losses on rentals.
August 3, 2024
Fine, then don’t invest in this type of renting. But capitalists won’t solve this problem for you either. And that leads the socialists who will only spend twice as much tax’s payers money on this – if not far more and in a really wasteful, non-effective way. They are the simple choices.
August 3, 2024
Reply to JR’s reply:
Over the past 100 years, surely several new towns bought land at existing use [farmland] value and captured the planning gain for public benefit. From Letchworth to Milton Keynes and a few more …
Housing has become hopelessly bureaucratised and financialised to the benefit of … bureaucrats and bankers.
If you enable people to build their own home, the state need have little or no role in the process. In many countries, self-build accounts for 40-50% or more of the new dwellings constructed. Sell families a serviced plot and leave them to get on with it. But that’s not how the UK works or how TPTB seem to want it to work.
It appears that printed money, from the way the financial system works has inflated the (real) price of houses by about 10x since the 1950s. Who’s getting rich from that? Not people who merely want a home. Unless that inflation ends, the problem is insoluble.
I’ve never wanted to rent, because of the insecurity. I built my own home 25 years ago. In most of the country, because of the above inflation in house and land prices, this would now be impossible for the average UK citizen.
August 4, 2024
There are limits to capitalism. Just look at the Post Office. The Post Office clearly attracted the worst types of capitalists.
Also, capitalists want to spend their money wisely. Good luck to them. They are not going to try and solve the government’s problems over housing ..
But nor can we afford to allow Labour to try and resolve the problem. They will just use lots of tax-payers money and unwisely.
So the Tories’ job is to step in where capitalists aren’t interested and to invest money for renting but at a much lower cost and in a far more efficient way than how Labour would do it.
Reply Do stop blundering. The Post Office is a nationalised industry not a capitalist enterprise. It is socialism in action, mugging taxpayers and locking up innocent employees.
August 3, 2024
The housing shortage is simply another deliberately manufactured crisis caused by the deliberate policy of mass immigration. There is no reason to import a population the size of Norway every 5 years. How do the Norwegians cope with a population of only 5.5 million?
If you import the third world you become the third world and crises are being manufactured in order to justify more authoritarian rule.
Impossible regulations on renting are designed to drive out private landlords and this will be followed by an attack on all private property through wealth taxes. Net Zero plays its part by destroying the economy and at the same time making housing unaffordable.
August 3, 2024
I agree” out-of-control immigration – that needs to be resolved – and both directly and indirectly.
But in the meantime, we still need more houses! (Or else native British people will be left without adequate housing – leading to even more unproductively and more costs to the tax-payer).
August 3, 2024
The costs and risks of being a landlord are not worth it since the government has increased taxes for this sector. I have several rental properties but I wouldn’t buy any more. Reintroducing the EPC level C and above regulations is the final nail in the coffin. All my houses are well insulated and have new boilers and double glazing yet none of them reach a C rating. This is an attack on the private rental sector as it doesn’t apply to council houses. This government like the last wants to get rid of the small investors in favour of their big corporate friends.
August 3, 2024
THIS:
“The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) publishes data on homes classed as empty for Council Tax purposes. In October 2022, there were 676,304 recorded empty homes in England. This is a 3.6% increase on the previous year’s total. 248,149 were classed as ‘long-term vacant’ properties (vacant for more than six months with some exceptions).”
So why do we need to concrete over more of our beautiful country?
August 4, 2024
I would imagine that many are ex-BtL’s which are now on the market for sale – there seems to be a great many of those in the “Northern Line” area of London (Clapham down to Morden). Others may be people who are abroad for a period and expect to return to take up residence again.
August 3, 2024
We need to restore our home ownership sector before increasing the rental one. That will require a change of attitude by potential buyers. As an idependent financial adviser for more than 40 years I saw this first hand.
In the 1970s most first time buyers were couples in their early 20s, mostly newly married. They sacrificed much to get on the property ladder as interest rates were at 8% and FTBs had housing expenditure of 50% of net income. In Maidenhead and most of the South, FTBs could only afford a flat, but it was worth it, because house prices were rising more quickly than wages.
Move forward to a decade ago when I retired at 62. By then, my investment clients would send their children and their partner to me to discuss a mortgage. What I often found was that, while they were up to ten years older, and had good salaries, they had financial obligations, such as credit card debts, car loans, or PCP agreements that seriously reduced their borrowing. power. To this you had to deduct expensive phone contracts, gym membership and much else. Former colleagues tell me nothing has changed today, except that FTB often want a house rather than a flat.
The outcome is that they cannot get a large enough mortgage, even though rates have been halved to 4%
A year ago, I carried out a comparison between 1973, when we first bought a flat in Maidenhead, and 2023. We started with second hand furniture and an old banger.
Adjusted for inflation, affordability is little different, as long as mortgage applicants do not have the large financial obligations so common today. The problem of buying is far more related to lifestyle than higher house prices. Younger people are no longer prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to get on the housing ladder that we were.
August 3, 2024
Chris S :
I agree with your lat sentence. How everything has changed…the first time I applied for a mortgage on a flat in the early 70s the branch manager’s first question was “Are you married or engaged to be married?” When I replied “No”, he then said I had no need of a mortgage and showed me the door with no further discussion allowed. He didn’t even ask if I could put down a deposit or how much I was earning. Towards to end of the 70s, I finally obtained a mortgage, first by sharing a house and then on my own. No bed – mattress only, free furniture collected from the local dump (possible in those days), deck chairs in the living room and the only heating was a coke fired boiler in the small kitchen which heated a water tank in the bathroom eventually. And definitely an old banger.
August 3, 2024
Sir John,
Given the fact that Wokingham has expanded beyond all recognition in the last decade, I was surprised to hear that Wokingham have been given a massive increase in the number of homes they are now mandated to build under Labour’s new mandatory housing diktat.
1308 is the new target up from 748 EVERY YEAR. My prediction is that Wokingham will expand and expand until it joins up with Reading and then we, along with Bracknell, will become part of a new city namely, Greater Reading. We are already seeing some harmonisation of service provision between the three towns.
August 3, 2024
Sorry, forgot to mention… I thought we were short of water locally which was the reason for forcing me to accept a water meter… Where have they found all this water then?
August 3, 2024
Based on past behaviour I suspect Wokingham will shunt all the new builds out the extreme edges with minimal infrastructure leaving a pretty green moat around the town itself where the majority of funds will be focused.
The only provision for green spaces in the sticks will be the weeds and undergrowth allowed to grow over paths and road verges – relabelled as “green corridors” of course.
August 3, 2024
Does anyone know if this is correct?
‘A special law was passed JUST FOR KIER STARMER to save tax on his pension when he retired from public Prosecutions in 2013. The Cameron Coalition government afforded him this unique right. This needs to be known widely. He’s just cut The Winter Fuel Allowance. Here’s a government document’
‘The Pensions Increase (Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC) Regulations 2013’
—
This if true is beyond belief
August 3, 2024
Yes.
I saw a vid. which mentioned that.
Pension on steroids.
Will see if I can find it.
August 3, 2024
Indeed it was! The Pensions Increase (Pension Scheme for Keir Starmer QC) Regulations 2013
Copy of the Act here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2013/2588/regulation/1/made
August 3, 2024
With JR ‘s permission
https://youtu.be/HmGRi5JJAwU?si=4aOrMmAbAuK-IoqR
Utterly extraordinary if it means what it appears to.
In an official govt. document too.
August 4, 2024
Yes, it’s true. Two-Tier-Keir had a special pension law made just for him, because he’s SO Equal. A real Prize Pig of the Animal Farm Variety.
August 3, 2024
It is vital to preserve and promote a flexible house rent market. For example, people moving house need to be able easily to find a tenancy; this is particularly important when they have to, or choose to, move a long distance.
Preventing ‘no fault evictions’, ie. contract terms, will destroy the market.
August 3, 2024
There is certainly a need for much greater investment in Build to Let property, typically of modern blocks of flats by both corporate landlords and local authorities. There is no need for Buy to Let unless it is of property which is unsuitable for owner occupation as it does not increase the housing stock and in fact causes it to deteriorate. In my neighbourhood, in addition to council properties, there are large high quality blocks built by an insurance company and a well respected UK wide major developer. We do not have room in our country for more little boxes with gardens for yapping dogs and screaming kids and that is not how most of the advanced world lives.
August 4, 2024
Without dogs and children? Poor them, they might be ‘advanced’ but have no future.
August 3, 2024
Firstly, the high levels are of immigrants (not ‘migrants’, as they’re not passing through!:-). Secondly, building more properties for rental will merely attract more immigrants and particularly asylum-seekers, as their rents will be subsidised and guaranteed by taxpayers, and landlords (who are increasingly absentee landlords) tend to prefer tenants with LA- and state-guaranteed rental payments, as working tenants are at risk of unemployment.
No young workers will be enabled to find a roof over their heads by any UK building programme until the influx ceases alongside the accompanying flood of billions in housing subsidy for the economically inactive.
August 3, 2024
In 1997 Blair deliberately planted the seed of social discontent (the now infamous threat to ‘rub our noses in diversity’) while Cameron continued to water it (he was annoyed at being called far right and racist) from 2010. Two PMs leading two parties that have without question destroyed a once great nation
We now see fear and violence stalk our nation and not one MP or ex-MP as ever condemned Blair and Cameron for their poisonous campaign to change the fundamental nature of our once great country
August 3, 2024
I don’t know where to begin on this vast topic but I’ll make 4 points:
-Too many taxes, regulations and restrictions are causing most of the problems in the housing market, both in renting and in housebuilding
-Social housing is run grossly inefficiently and should be reduced (by selling off) to ’emergency only’ temporary accommodation
-Owner occupation is much better than renting and should be helped to expand
-Homes are not seen by most owners primarily as homes but as investments because due to inflation, taxes and big risks with other kinds of investment property is usually the best form of investment, indeed for most people the only viable way of more or less safeguarding one’s money in modern society.
This sad situation can be ameliorated but not fully cured.
August 4, 2024
It can be cured by maintaining ‘honest money’ so that people can save in a bank or building society. It can be cured by removing duplicate taxation on everything except your main home.