Budget breakdown, Letwin review and Oxfordshire deals A vision for homes? Just a few weeks ago Theresa May dedicated what remains of her premiership to fixing the housing problem. A bold claim and one which she almost immediately passed to besieged Phillip Hammond to deliver in his Budget today. And Spreadsheet Phil has come up with an interesting package of measures, but is there any real substance here? The answer is not really. The Chancellor has announced a few new measures, repackaged a few older measures and carefully sought to break down the dominance of the big house builders […]

  Chelgate Local is hosting a Breakfast Briefing on December 5 about Garden Towns and Villages at Essex County Cricket Club in Chelmsford. Come and have breakfast with senior Essex and Hertfordshire politicians and discuss current projects in Essex and Hertfordshire and hear their views on solving the housing crisis. Held in conjunction with Bidwells please reply to this email or contact rlass@chelgate.com to find out more and reserve a place.   About Chelgate Local Chelgate Local offers a comprehensive range of strategic communications advice, planning PR, advocacy, consultation and engagement to support our clients as they move through the […]

  UK Housing Numbers, Garden Villages and Westminster Hostility…   We give you the ins and outs of what’s been happening in planning this month: A boost for housing The Department for Communities and Local Government has attempted a bold new step in addressing our housing crisis. A new formula to calculate housing targets means that 150 local authorities across the UK have seen their housing targets increase by as much as 35 percent. For the local authorities baffled by the new formula, it comprises of three steps: Looking at household growth projections published by the Office of National Statistics […]

UKIP’s rise and fall could be considered the greatest phenomenon in modern British politics. Their rapid rise to success, and their even faster demise, makes their story unlike any of the other parties in the British political scene.   From its outset in the 1990s UKIP presented themselves as outsiders, different to the political elites of Westminster. In part, this was true, and their success as outsiders got several of them elected to comfortable seats in Brussels – where they have enjoyed large pay packets at the same time as they complained about the system (Nigel Farage is still an MEP). […]

  General Election Update, General Election Prediction, Conservative Manifesto, Local Elections, Council Mergers, CLG Select Committee, Southern Rail, PD Drilling Rights and Three Men and a Lady   General Election Update We are now only two and a half weeks away from polling day and the formation of a new Government. The polls, commentators and just about everyone else (barring John McDonnell) think Theresa May and her ‘team’ will end up with a ‘Thatcher style majority’. More…  General Election Prediction Entries to our General Election competition are flooding in. Averaging entries out, the prediction is an overall majority in the […]