Charles D. Gall

Council housing in London is being exploited on an industrial scale: illegal sublets, Airbnb rackets, bogus applications, Right to Buy abuse, overseas absentee tenants and Council officers acting corruptly. The First Lady of Sierra Leone reportedly having a free gaff in Southwark is only the start of it. (1/x) telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/05/1…

I hate to be that guy but this appears to be the Mayor of London boasting about building less than half of the city's housing target.

@ns123abc why... does it look like that

This might be the ugliest Ferrari I’ve ever seen

Oh. Oh no.

@jameswilson @bswud yea, its worse

@bswud So simple but makes a big difference to the aesthetics

I very slightly improved the architecture here: just a slight strengthening of the piers, put simple deco detailing on the spandrels (and recessed them a tad) and added a basic cornice. And I made it today’s weather. (I actually think these are OK as it is and better than 60% of what gets built, and we need the homes, but it’s fun to see how easy it is to improve these things.)

Capital programmes being reviewed, rescoped and redirected every time council control changes is one of the reasons Britain can’t build. Why should Westminster Council have any meaningful say over a major project significant to the entire capital? It is absurd.

@defossardf UK is so heavily privatised, people have precious few opportunities to experience the fact that sometimes public ownership is worse

I really hate posting about infrastructure, it doesn't interest me at all, but Britain is going to experience a hellish real-life experiment in the dangers of nationalisation in the next few years. Essential and functional lines are going to be cut and starved of money, performative ticket price cuts will not make up for a collapse in service, standards or reliability.

@TheMurkyDepths services are usually cut back in the summer by the operator, no? It's a massive pain that makes no sense as the trains rarely seem less busy. Never got why, maybe GBR can run a regular timetable!

Thameslink will be taken over by govt in coming weeks. Shortly after service cuts commence. It includes stations in areas of major housing growth. Just one direct train per hour from north Kent stations to the Elizabeth line will result. fromthemurkydepths.co.uk/2026/05/24/tha…

@standardnews everybody say "thank you gentrification"

East London regeneration sees number of deprived neighbourhoods in capital plummet trib.al/V263UkP

@strickschal @TheCityMentor who is paying to build a replica 1700s Lutheran church at Hauptbahnhof?

@Dirigissimo @TheCityMentor Rebuilt from the dust.

When I visited Berlin this weekend I noticed how that most newly built districts feel empty Meanwhile most historic districts are vibrant and full of life Can you spot what went wrong?

My god. Finally...! Even Fraser cannot now downplay the reality - speaking about these crimes is pretty important, ignoring them and pointing to a graph of overall crime does not address them! We need rapid action - sting operations, gang crackdowns, longer sentences for career criminals. No excuses. It's not rocket science. Police and politicians can - and must - get it done!

glad to hear it. but you did just post a big list of reasons why densifying urban areas is too hard...? unfortunately that article repeats your paper’s (p 21) claims about Cambridge being too medieval to expand. Not at all convincing, as that describes the core of every successful mid-sized city in Europe... So I can only emphasise that “expansion is too difficult, build Forest City instead” is really really bad political framing. Let's do both! x.com/isnit0/status/…

It was Samuel that pitted them as alternatives. I am all up for densifying urban areas, and frequently campaign for this. We often talk about the fact that we're just 8 miles from Cambridge. It's mentioned many times in our report, and even many times in just the introduction: forestcity.uk/report I'm not sure which white paper you're referring to? We don't tend to talk about GCDC much. I did a piece in CapX recently which might be what you're referring to? That's more focused on the challenges that the vision-less Development Corporation faces.

Its actually 4.3 million homes which would be the equivalent of building a second London somewhere. I think ill stick to the normal strategy of trying to build where prices are high and people actually want to live.

@6_4_571_1 Because it benefits the least productive, therefore is moral and correct please don't enquire further

How on earth is council house swapping allowed?

Great, but that’s not what comes through above at all? i'd really encourage you to lean into this framing rather than present Forest City as an alternative to urban intensification. We need both. If its value is being 15 minutes from Cambridge, then fundamentally that means being part of a much bigger, better-connected Cambridge region, which goes hand in hand with intensifying the city itself. IMO your white paper spends too much time positioning Forest City as an alternative to CGC plans (very similar!) rather than articulating complementarity as part of an east Cambridge growth region, which would be a much stronger case to govt.

You realise we're effectively suggesting Mega-Cambridge? It's just impossible to densify central Cambridge because of the medieval streets and historical buildings. A significant part of Forest City's value prop is that it's 15 min into Cambridge, and will allow the productionisation of academic work, much like SF did for Stanford.

@ACAPeckham - people who grew up locally and would like the chance of finding somewhere to buy inside zone 3 before the age of 45

Ah! You mean people who: - aren't looking for second homes - aren't looking for Air BnB properties - aren't looking to park their money in an empty property ?????

well, they accreted over centuries around places with the strongest geographic and economic conditions for growth? what's your point? If anyone advocated building London II next to London, it would be seen as a bit silly as the obviously rational outcome would be to expand the existing city. Same applies here i'm afraid. Embrace the inevitability of Mega-Cambridge.

@Dirigissimo @watling_samuel Where do you think the cities came from?

A raft of rail cuts coming to Thameslink weeks after the Dept for Transport take over. Greenwich line down to just one train per hour for much of the day. This runs through Housing Minister Matt Pennycook's constituency impacting new housing near stations fromthemurkydepths.co.uk/2026/05/24/tha…

@isnit0 @watling_samuel Why then does the 6,700 year history of cities almost exclusively show a pattern of expanding existing places rather than building anew? Gotta agglomerate up in dat bih

Here are just a few reasons it's hard: - you need to dig up roads that people use - you need to halt trains that people use - you need to double either the speed or the throughput of our trains - you need to double all the existing utility provisioning, without disrupting current service - you need to get double the amount of power and water through our legacy electrical and water networks - you need to fund it somehow (with very little land-value uplift) - you need to fight a large number of people who try to block it - you need undo greenbelt classifications - you need to forcibly buy lots of land in one of the most expensive cities in the world - you need to tunnel, not cut-and-cover There are many more reasons to boot. They're surmountable, but it's much much much easier to just do it somewhere else.

@watling_samuel I really admire their advocacy but it would be far better focused on advocating for major urban extension to Cambridge. Building a competing settlement with no transport connectivity 10 miles away is Not It.

Telling that the New Statesman could not commission an argument for actual existing social housing and instead just did abundance. What is going on is indefensible, if resources are scarce they should not just be handed out to the non employed before anyone else.