Highly qualified friend (Harvard JD, 8 YOE in corporate law) thinks that ~60% of the junior level work is pretty easily automated and has quit his fancy role to explore that space
If you’re in the legal AI scene in London and want someone fresh from the industry DM me
Given the massive positive externalities of new housing (rents, energy efficiency, fertility, economic mobility) it is frankly mad that post-2020 the government has decided to raise both taxes and regulatory requirements on building them. Idiotic.
(1/n)
Since 2020, £76,000 has been added to the average cost of building a new home.
Let’s look at a break down of those costs 👇
🟦 More than £7,000 in taxes and levies, including…
🔸 £2,000 in Landfill Tax
🔸 £2,320 from the forthcoming Building Safety Levy
🔸 £2,055 in other taxes
🔸 £985 from inflationary increases on existing charges such as Section 106 agreements
🟦 Over £23,000 in regulatory costs including…
🔸 £7,770 for building regulations
🔸 £5,700 for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)
🔸 £10,200 in costs linked to the Future Homes Standard
🟦 £37,000 in increased material and labour costs due to high levels of inflation
🟦 £7,000 in additional potential site-specific costs, like nutrient mitigation requirements
We’re calling on Government to implement a moratorium on new policy costs, taxes, and levies affecting home building and to conduct a comprehensive review of cumulative regulatory impacts.
Taxes/requirements on the risky, hard to manage, and delay prone world of construction are extremely damaging: £1 of additional requirements may cost multiple pounds down the line once risk buffers, financing costs, and fudge factors are taken into account.
(3/n)
@Victoria_Spratt This statement is confused. Inflation acts as a *baseline* for price increases. If construction costs only went up by the inflation rate they would have 0% real price growth and not be any more expensive compared to the rest of the economy.
"UK construction output falls at fastest pace for six years"
The recent slump in the PMI is mainly due to the fallout from the Middle East crisis, but the sector has been struggling ever since the summer of 2024... 🤔
Housebuilding in particular has been persistently weak.
Random guy at a hostel recommended climbing up mount tai and we were going to Shanghai anyway so stopped in at Tai’an, Fuzhou was on the way to Nanning (high speed rail was harder to get in 2012, so you took these long sleeper journeys and stoped a lot), and Yangzhou was a destination due to it allowing ‘real’ (non-electric) motorbikes and beign a relief from the rest of China (note the lack of endless 50 story copy and paste apartment blocks)
@kaburicrab For me it was the abandoning of liberal philosophical norms around fairness and a turn towards assessing people primarily as members of an identity group
@bswud@AndrewSabisky You could just as easily call ‘feast and famine’ ‘diligently testing if British costs have got better, and rationally reacting to them being terrible’
Original Vs the revised approved proposal.
seems counter-intuitive that the planning process is used to shrink new office developments, despite corporate rents being higher in London than NYC and clearly a drag on competitiveness.
🚨 Approved: 1 Silk Street redevelopment
✅ 86,000 sqm of Grade A workspace
✅ New public plaza by the Barbican
✅ Cultural, retail & community spaces
✅ Greener, lower-carbon design
A major step in delivering a more vibrant, inclusive, 7-day Square Mile. #DestinationCity
Read more here: https://t.co/HCRu8H05pB
Goes unnoticed that a large chunk of the British population are stuck in Hobbesian parking hell with no political solution on the horizon.
More bike lanes doesn’t actually fix the acute land shortage in small commuter belt towns