Sabitlenmiş Tweet
Jethro F Elsden
11.8K posts
Jethro F Elsden
@JethroFElsden
Chief Economist at @yimbyinitiative. Views my own.
London Katılım Ekim 2010
5.7K Takip Edilen912 Takipçiler
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Chart of the Day 🤓
This morning's ONS estimates suggest that total public service productivity (TPSP) grew by 0.6% in 2025, but was still 3.1% lower than the pre-Covid peak in 2019.
Note also that TPSP grew steadily between 2010 and 2019, after years of stagnation... 🤔
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
LONDON FLATS: % SELLING AT A LOSS
Consistent with the recent poor performance, London Flats have reversed the trend of experiencing lower loss rates than the national picture.
Nearly 20% of London Flat sellers are realising a loss - much higher than the equivalent numbers in the Global Financial Crisis.
UK Property Insight@ukhpinfo
This is the same chart for London Flats (data only goes back to 1995 though). There has been no growth since 2016 (a toxic combination of Leasehold, Flats, London with a smattering of New Build).
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Failed legal challenges have delayed major infrastructure projects like new roads and power stations by a collective 32 years.
Labour recently changed the law to cut the time it takes to throw out anti-infrastructure lawsuits.
And it's working. One parish council sued to try to stop a solar farm.
In the past, the case would likely have dragged on for over a year. But last month, a Judge threw out the case in just two months.
That's just one project, but that's a year saved already. It means new infrastructure will get built quicker and we can reap the benefits sooner.
samdumitriu.com/p/the-planning…
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Hard to believe, but yes, London housebuilding could somehow get even worse msn.com/en-gb/money/ot…
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Ouch 🙄
Latest S&P Global UK Construction PMI suggests activity tanked again in April 👇
(Fallout from Iran war obviously a big factor, but the sector has struggled ever since the summer of 2024 🤔)
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
I'm interested in "trapped buildings": those that couldn't be built today (because of zoning and code changes) but also can't be substantially modified or demolished (because of historic protection rules). One of those phenomena that really makes one wonder what exactly we're trying to do.
Has anyone ever estimated what fraction of buildings in major cities fall into this category?
When I asked Claude about San Francisco, it concluded: "If forced to give a single number with a single confidence rating: roughly 100,000 buildings — about two-thirds of San Francisco's physical structures — sit in the trap as a practical matter. Confidence: moderate. The number could be 70,000 or 130,000 depending on how strictly you operationalize "can't be substantially modified.""
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
People talk about Rail privitisation like it was an unmitigated disaster
Peter Hitchens@ClarkeMicah
Oh, like railway privatisation, and legalising ambulance-chasing no-win, no fee lawyers. Thanks a lot, Sir John
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Tony Juniper was Executive Director of Friends of the Earth and ran for Parliament for the Green Party. The Conservatives made him Chairman of Natural England in 2019.
James Wright@JPBWFarm
According to Natural England's modelling, the fish disco will save just 0.083 salmon and 0.028 sea trout per year. That works out to over £280,000 per fish saved. For £700 million, we could wipe out Somerset’s £41 million council deficit for a decade, fix every single pothole in the county, build a rail link to Minehead, and make every bus in Somerset free for years. Or we could just make the electricity that Hinkley produces cheaper, and we'd all benefit. Being a poor country is a choice.
English
The thing is that for many people they don't think housing behaves like any other good - note the polling that found people think new housing in their area won't bring prices down.
Tom Chivers@TomChivers
How can stuff like this get written? Imagine it for any other good! “Affordability is driving the chocolate price spike, not a cocoa bean shortage. We just need to designate some beans as special cheap beans to bring prices down” bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Fiscal localism is the answer to Britain’s need for data centres in the face of NIMBYism.
We don’t need the whole country to accept them, we just need to allow a couple of hundred thousand people to get rich from doing so.
dylan matthews 🔸@dylanmatt
Wild: data centers are now responsible for nearly half of county tax revenue in Loudon County, VA @judgeglock city-journal.org/article/loudou…
English
@rcolvile Touche.
Although I still think removing heads of regulators/making it clear that's what you are going to do unless they take more account of growth would have a meaningful impact even without changing the habitats regulations.
English
This is the point I keep making. Natural England are legally mandated to only care about the fish, not Putin, power cuts, bankrupt businesses etc. We have eliminated any concept of ‘trade-offs’, at vast expense.
Sam Dumitriu@Sam_Dumitriu
Natural England have decided that £700m spent protecting fish isn’t enough. They want EDF to do even more before they’ll let them switch the plant on. This will cause a big delay. Put simply, Natural England is a threat to our energy security. telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Why does a planning application for one tunnel under the Thames take 360,000 pages and cost £300m? Why does the UK have the world's highest industrial electricity prices?Degrowth is UK policy BY DESIGN. Watch an ex PM repeat the worst brain dead Greta Thunberg degrowth nonsense.
(Quote below ht @cremieux)
Boris Johnson@BorisJohnson
Falling birth rates aren’t a disaster, they’re the best bit of global news in a long time mol.im/a/15782963
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
This stupid law brings rent controls in through the back door. The tribunal will be run by economically illiterate lefties who will always view rent rises as unjustified.
Sky News@SkyNews
'If someone does challenge a rent increase, there will be a tribunal to test whether the rent is right.' Chief executive of Generation Rent, Ben Twomey, speaks to Sky News, as the new Renters' Rights Act comes into force today. Watch our report here: trib.al/q1Dm14X
English
The head of NE really should have been fired a long time ago. The Growth Duty applies to NE meaning they have a statutory duty to account for growth in their decisions and policy - they clearly have been in breach of it for a long time.
Sam Dumitriu@Sam_Dumitriu
Natural England have decided that £700m spent protecting fish isn’t enough. They want EDF to do even more before they’ll let them switch the plant on. This will cause a big delay. Put simply, Natural England is a threat to our energy security. telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Natural England have decided that £700m spent protecting fish isn’t enough.
They want EDF to do even more before they’ll let them switch the plant on.
This will cause a big delay.
Put simply, Natural England is a threat to our energy security.
telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/…
English
@rcolvile The growth duty is currently toothless, but routinely firing the head of a quango when they don't balance growth Vs other duties appropriately is probably the one way to make it have traction on regulator decisions.
English
@rcolvile They do have the growth duty - they are meant to take account of the impact on growth. The gov should fire the head of NE and tell them they haven't been balancing growth with their other duties properly. I suspect if they did that there would be a recalibration.
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
Some remarkable data out of Hamptons (featured in the Telegraph), showing that 10% of all sales in London are previously rental properties.
More evidence that further restrictions in the property market are damaging for renters, and young people trying to start in the capital.
English
Jethro F Elsden retweetledi
We have a brand new railway that has been sat unused for two years because the unions want to double the number of staff required to run them.
English