In the Guardian, I argue that Britain’s nature protections often lead to expensive, ineffective mitigations and, paradoxically, harm nature in the long run because they make it harder to build the clean energy infrastructure we need to tackle climate change.
Building on just half of these sites at terraced house densities would deliver more than 30,000 homes, while allowing the rest to be turned into genuinely open spaces for Londoners to enjoy nature, walk their dogs, and exercise. www.samdumitriu.com/p/homes-or-g...
There are 1,420 hectares of golf course (including 565 hectares of publicly owned golf courses) within walking distance of train stations, busy bus routes, and town centres.
Many are publicly owned. If London’s publicly owned golf courses were a borough, they would be larger than Hammersmith and Fulham.
One golf course pays just £13,500 in rent to Enfield council for 39 hectares. That’s £3,000 less than it costs to rent a one bed flat in Enfield.
Golf is a land-hungry sport.
London’s 95 golf courses (excluding courses with fewer than 9 holes) take almost as much land as all other sporting activities combined.
If London’s golf courses were a borough, they would be its 15th largest.
Roughly the size of Brent.
(Source: golfbelt.russellcurtis.co.uk)
Sadiq Khan has identified London's golf courses as potential sites for new homes.
Here are some facts about London's golf courses.
www.standard.co.uk/news/london/...
Labour's rewrite of planning policy is genuinely radical, but there's a real risk that good intentions are watered-down due to unclear drafting.
Michael Hill and I have set out three problems that could undermine an otherwise admirably bold document.
www.samdumitriu.com/p/whats-wron...
I am more relaxed than most about Palantir's role in the British public sector, but this is disturbing.
Not only did the CEO twice use a slur about the intellectually disabled, the company account then reposted it.
(His core message on Anthropic is hateful too.)
Starmer: “Every time I go to pull a lever, there are a whole bunch of regulations ... that mean the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be”
He has a point. Some London boroughs won't be impacted by his housing target policy until the end of this Parliament.
Labour's plan to build 1.5m homes is reliant on housing targets.
One big problem: they are unlikely to impact London, which is meant to deliver a huge share of those homes, until the 2030s!
My latest explains how places like Camden can avoid higher targets.
www.samdumitriu.com/p/the-london...
There are a lot of motorists in Britain who will feel higher prices at the pump. They are unlikely to look kindly upon a policy to increase prices further.
There's a big risk that conflict in Iran forces Reeves to reverse tax rises, leaving the Government in an even weaker fiscal position.
Her plans bake in a 1p rise in fuel duty in Sep and a 2p rise in Dec. Is that politically possible in an oil crisis?
The Shoreditch Works application has taken 4 years and 9,000 pages of documents. Hackney Council has concluded what this project needs is… more documents.
What had this got to do with housebuilding?
This is interesting.
Looks like the EU is planning to reform the Habitats Regulations out of concern they restrict clean energy development too much.
www.tlt.com/insights-and...
NEW: Labour are on track to miss their 1.5 million home by a distance.
Our analysis of planning application data predicts only 800,000 homes will be built in England by 2029.
Just 3.4% of people in England live somewhere on track to meet their housing target.
www.samdumitriu.com/p/labours-15...
thread
Would you say a 9,054-page planning application for an office block and some flats is:
A) Too long
B) About right
C) Not long enough
If you answered C, congratulations! You could work at Hackney Council.
This is a must-read.
A forensic analysis of a planning application (and a report from planners recommending its refused).
Kafkaesque is over-used, but it is the perfect description of the process so far for the extremely popular Shoreditch Works scheme.
One of the big problems for marketeers such as myself is that people absolutely hate prices being used to indicate scarcity. Rent controls are exactly the same as calls for constraints on TicketMaster: requests to move towards a system of queuing for scarce products rather than money.
Britain is a very centralised country. Britain is also a very expensive place to build new infrastructure.
Are these two facts linked? @alonlevy.bsky.social, one of the world’s top experts on infrastructure costs doesn’t think so. Here’s why I disagree.
open.substack.com/pub/samdumit...
The £180,000 scheme did exist, it just wasn't delivered by BCT. The BCT merely gave it an award. The fundamental point - nature can be protected more cost-effectively - still stands.
The fact the Wildlife Trusts didn't point this out in their rebuttal speaks incredibly poorly of them.
Image shows the full text of the letter signed by 45 figures. The letter is too long for alt text, but can be summarised as defending the Fingleton review over a recent Wildlife Trusts report on these grounds: Some nature NGOs have now begun to campaign against recommendations 11, 12, and 19 of the review. These reforms would: · Remove the costly requirement for like-for-like on-site environmental mitigation (11) · Create a streamlined alternative pathway for compliance with the habitats regulation that would unlock significant funding for nature recovery (12) · Remove the vague National Park Duty introduced by the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 (19)
NEW: 45 leading figures from academia, business and politics tell Ed Miliband "Don't U-turn" on the commitment to implement every recommendation of the Fingleton Nuclear Regulatory Review.
Full letter below.
Is it me or is this really egregious?
Green NGOs have published a briefing claiming that the Fingleton Review into nuclear regulation made up a key case study.
The only problem is they didn't. And it isn't hard to check.
The Wildlife Trusts have published a briefing claiming that the Fingleton Review's into nuclear regulation was 'flawed' in its use of evidence.
I've read their briefing. And frankly it's laughable. Full of errors and in some cases, outright misleading.
www.samdumitriu.com/p/in-defence...
Yes, a perverse incentive
The problem isn't that this was an expensive way of complying with the law. The problem is the law forces us to spend massive amounts on environmental mitigations of dubious value.
Note: he doesn't argue that a bat tunnel would be the best way to spend £100m on nature. (2/2)
"HS2's £100m bat tunnel isn't a waste of money" argues HS2 Ltd's top ecologist.
His argument: There was "no better solution that met species protection law and reduced cost."
I'd argue he has completely missed the point. (1/2)
If the policy debate is whether or not to do net zero (or something like it) then we need to make clear that this is a policy to do it.
This really matters because there isn’t a political consensus on pursuing net zero anymore.
