Harold Macmillan was Minister of Housing and Local Government 1951-54 in Winston Churchill’s Conservative Government. He had been given the target of building three hundred thousand new homes every year. The UK was still suffering from the social and economic effects of the Second World War and the demand for clean and safe modern housing […]

At present it is hard to feel anything other than gloom about economic news. Unemployment fugures are high and firms struggle to access much-needed finance. The current global orthodoxy for governments is that of ‘necessary cuts’. Deepening ‘doom and gloom’ the credit rating agency Moody’s has this week noted a negative outlook for the UK […]

In a prior blog-post headed, Property Rights: Do They Also Include Responsibilities?, it was argued that ownership of a property not only grants rights, such as that of determining who should or should not reside in or on it, but also responsibilities. The outstanding responsibility is that towards the community or society in which the […]

Across from where the writer is sitting there is a rather forlorn and neglected house of considerable size. In its heyday it must have been the home of a prosperous upper-middle-class family. For a number of years now it has been allowed to crumble and deteriorate. It has of late hosted a seemingly variable number […]

The Government is currently undertaking a consultation about the National Policy Framework for house-building. The aim is to simplify the policies binding local councils and house-builders. The responses of groups such as the National Trust, Woodland Trust and Campaign for the Protection of Rural England have – predictably – been negative. The National Trust is […]