Bruce, as your are one of the more consistently sensible contributors to this forum, I was surprised to see this post from you. Building homes is a social good. The state builds hardly any homes these days so it is entirely down to the private sector to meet demand. It is failing to do this because not only does it have to pay the taxes other sectors do but a whole range of extra charges from planning fees, S106 and CIL contributions. In addition it is required to supply subsidised housing through affordability quotas.At the same time the industry faces a range of other challenges such as rising land and labour costs, higher interest rates and a painfully slow regulatory system.An insistence that anyone building a home should also be responsible for providing the services that will be needed for the people living in those homes may seem laudable but it has resulted in a situation where no homes are being built and rents and homelessness is skyrocketing.Governments should be responsible for providing public services not housebuilders.Finally, the Mayor seems to be realising that 'affordable' housing quotas are serving to make all housing unaffordable and that they need to be fundamentally rethought to get housing starts going again.In this context we need to ask, if the developer of Burlington Lane came back and said we'll reduce the height of this building to six storeys if we didn't need to include the social rent flats, what should we say?
Jeremy Parkinson ● 19d