
Stuart Brown
6.3K posts

Stuart Brown
@InclusiveBuild
Calling for a safe and inclusive built environment that works for all.









Just an everyday tale of infrastructure in the UK — how to spend £179m on not building a tunnel.

This is deeply symbolic of the British Bureaucracy sickness we are suffering from. £179m spent, for literally nothing. World class waste.




Stonehenge tunnel scrapped by Labour despite £180MILLION being spent - 'Huge blow' gbnews.com/lifestyle/cars…

Stonehenge tunnel officially scrapped - after more than £179,000,000 spent on plan lbc.co.uk/article/stoneh…

Plan for new 'Potholes Fund' using money intended for active travel would be 'a disaster' say campaigners Actually, it would be the most logical thing to do! @Heidi_Labour @LDN_gov @SadiqKhan @transportgovuk edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/plan-for-…




LEASEHOLD IS KILLING THE FLATS MARKET AND LABOUR PROTECTS THE EXPLOITERS 🥀 Leasehold is a scam. But this @UKLabour government has caved to Big Money interests who want to keep it going. They’ve published a draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill that’s been watered down. The manifesto and King’s Speech promised the remaining @Law_Commission recommendations on enfranchisement and Right to Manage. Yet none of it appears in the draft legislation published in January. Service charges can quickly become a second or third mortgage, and are often arbitrarily imposed and increased at rates that far outstrip inflation. People’s salaries are not increasing in line with service charges. Why would any sane individual put their life savings into an asset controlled by someone else – someone whose interests are completely opposed to their own – and whose extractive behaviour could easily devalue the property, making it unmortgageable and impossible to sell? It’s no wonder Barclays has found that first-time buyers are skipping flats altogether and instead procuring their ‘forever home’: a freehold house with no extractive outside freeholder and more predictable, controllable running costs. A recent analysis by Hamptons found that leasehold flats are disproportionately losing value compared to freehold houses. For example, in the capital, 60% of property sales were flats last year, but these represented 90% of homes sold at a loss. We have a crisis in the flats market and no serious government response. Even after winning a High Court judicial review fought by the freeholder lobby in October, the government won’t commence long-awaited policies in the 2024 Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act. That includes abolishing marriage value and setting enfranchisement rates high so leaseholders can more cheaply extend a lease or buy the freehold. Labour was founded to take on rentier interests. Yet with the second biggest majority in the party’s history, it acts powerless. Putting exploiters before the exploited. Local elections aren’t far off. Leaseholders will remember at the ballot box. telegraph.co.uk/money/property…









