Centre for British Progress

The Centre for British Progress is a non-partisan think tank on a mission to accelerate and shape an era of British growth and progress; evolved from @UKDayOne.

[Centre for British Progress @BritishProgress]

What if the residents of a street could collectively decide to build more homes on it - and share directly in the benefits?

That's street votes. In our new paper with @LabourTogether we set out how community-led street votes could help @SteveReedMP build 1.5 million new homes.

https://t.co/sAz7BwOpKS

Street votes let neighbours come together, work with an architect, agree a new plan for their street, and vote. If they say yes, building happens with their consent, on their terms, with benefits flowing to the people who already live there.

Building in towns and cities is vital - it adds much-needed homes where people want to live, it’s more sustainable and it grows a more resilient local economy. But building in cities and towns is difficult. Under street votes, instead of builders, councils, and residents fighting each other, the community can push for more homes themselves. And because ordinary people are driving the change on small sites, new homes can be built faster than the big schemes relying on big developers.

Street votes learn from international schemes that have delivered tens of thousands of homes a year in cities like Seoul and Tel Aviv. Applied here, the evidence suggests up to 30,000 new homes a year in the places we need them most - with the first homes delivered before the end of this Parliament.

Much of the work has already been done to put communities in the driver’s seat with street votes. MHCLG just needs to implement the rules. In this paper, @1jamesHowat, @KaneEmerson & @dc_lawrence set out the final steps that the Government should take to build thousands of new homes with popular support.

[David Lawrence @dc_lawrence]

🚨NEW REPORT🚨 from @watt_direction @BritishProgress on how to get down electricity costs to help decarbonisation.

We need a quid pro quo: move levies onto general taxation now, in return for fundamental reforms to stop us wasting money on expensive generation.

Read all about it 👇

[Ed Hezlet @watt_direction]

What’s the biggest barrier to decarbonising Britain?

We think it’s expensive electricity.

@BritishProgress have 4 policy ideas to cut household bills by £115, and save businesses 7%.

But bill reductions must come alongside market reform - to ensure long term value for money.

[Martha Dacombe @martha_dacombe]

Personal news! 🚀

Delighted to be joining @BritishProgress today as the Programme Manager for Technology and State Capacity.

[Ronit Kanwar @RonitKanwar]

Great opportunity to help get the UK growing again!

[Centre for British Progress @BritishProgress]

🚨 We are hiring! 🚨

Could you be our next head of operations? 👀

We are looking for an exceptionally high-agency, adaptable and organised individual, who is excited about our mission to create UK growth & progress, to run operations for our growing team.

Full time, £70-90k, London.

Full details & how to apply here: https://t.co/pUJCCBNCHD

[David Lawrence @dc_lawrence]

Could wealth taxes be heading our way?

This week Wes Streeting called for equalising capital gains & income tax, and Andy Burnham hinted at a tax on land.

The UK's tax system is unfair and inefficient. We reward those who earn money by doing nothing, and punish those who work.

But do wealth taxes actually work?

In my latest piece for @ArguablyMag, I look at the two strongest candidates for reform:

⚖️ Equalising capital gains tax with income tax
🏡 Reforming property taxation, such as by replacing SDLT with an annual property tax

I argue that one of these is far better for growth than the other: while a property tax encourages investment in more productive assets, and the development of land, taxing capital gains can do the opposite, reducing the return on productive investment and encouraging capital flight.

Read the full piece here: https://t.co/4iWT0uLMM1

Thanks to @pdmsero for helping with much of the analysis!

[Anna Gát 🧭 @TheAnnaGat]

On the one hand there are all the layoffs -- on the other hand, everybody's always looking for a good head of operations (which these days also includes vibe coding) the position of GOLD, the irreplaceable, the life-changing, always very very needed -- just a thought:

[Matt Clifford @matthewclifford]

Great role👇

[David Lawrence @dc_lawrence]

An organisation is only as effective as its operations team, and that's why we're looking for an exceptional individual to lead our ops at @BritishProgress.

If you might be that person, get in touch! Or if you know someone else who could be, please share with them.

[Andrew Bennett @andrewjb_]

the most ambitious thing you can work on today is rebuilding the country

maybe that’s at a company, like building our TSMC

but maybe it’s at @britishprogress, who are leading a new generation of high-leverage non-profits raising our national policy ambition

strongly recommend applying:

[Julia Willemyns @jujulemons]

We’ve grown enormously over the past year, and now we’re looking for someone exceptional to help us take the next leap.

It’s a special role on a special team. Please share with brilliant people - and consider applying yourself!

[John Myers @johnrmyers]

Come and work with an incredible team!

[Centre for British Progress @BritishProgress]

🚨 We are hiring! 🚨

Could you be our next head of operations? 👀

We are looking for an exceptionally high-agency, adaptable and organised individual, who is excited about our mission to create UK growth & progress, to run operations for our growing team.

Full time, £70-90k, London.

Full details & how to apply here: https://t.co/pUJCCBNCHD

[David Lawrence @dc_lawrence]

This is fantastic to see from the Chancellor.

Rather than strengthening democracy, judicial review has become a blocker: preventing elected governments from delivering public services & national infrastructure.

Delighted that Reeves is tackling JR reform head on, and drawing on @BritishProgress's work on this.

[Ed Hezlet @watt_direction]

Britain has made amazing progress in decarbonising its electricity supply - It's a country that should be using more power! ⚡️

And more consumption is needed if we are to soften the impact of rising network costs...

[Kane Emerson @KaneEmerson]

We can either build data centres in Britain or elsewhere in the world.

But it's clear that a British data centre is better for the world's climate than an American data centre.

[Freddie Poser @freddie_poser]

This was a fascinating piece to work on.

This chart tells you all you need to know about why saying YES to data centres in the UK is vital.

[David Lawrence @dc_lawrence]

Thanks to the Government's decarbonisation efforts, a British data centre produces far less carbon than those in comparable countries.

This makes Britain one of the best advanced economies in the world for building new data centres, from a climate perspective.

We have the third most data centres in the world, and have decarbonised much quicker than other comparable countries.

We should make the most of this advantage. As AI companies are willing to invest £billions in building data centres, there is a huge opportunity for Britain to move quickly and secure economic dividends – as well as greater leverage in a world increasingly driven by AI.

Read the full report for @britishprogress here: https://t.co/60KOgRPAsG

[David Lawrence @dc_lawrence]

Data centres also make new green projects viable. They literally pay for the Government's Clean Power 2030 mission.

To see how this works, look no further than Ynys Môn (Anglesey), an island off the north coast of Wales, where an ambitious AI Growth Zone is colocated with some of the world's most exciting new green tech:

⚡️New Rolls Royce Small Modular Reactors (3 initially, potential for 8)
🌊 Morlais tidal power, a project west of the island
🍃 3x offshore wind farms in the Irish Sea – Gwynt y Môr, Awel y Môr, and Mona.

This is a symbiotic relationship: Anglesey's data centres provide industrial, baseload demand for these projects, making them economically viable.

This not only helps decarbonisation, but can also reduce bills for consumers. Most of the cost of renewables is in infrastructure & transmission, and curtailment costs (where wind turbines are switched off due to insufficient demand) have been going up. By boosting demand on the system, data centres help cover these costs and reduce the bill for ordinary households.