Paul Smith
@pmsmith.bsky.social
Developer, land promoter, planner, surveyor, cyclist, YIMBY. MD of The Strategic Land Group, director at LPDF, advisor to PricedOut and columnist for Housing Today. I write longer things on Substack: https://open.substack.com/pub/longwall
“Spend enough time working in England’s planning system, and it will make anyone cross. Planning minister Matthew Pennycook appears to have reached that point too.” This month’s Housing Today column is about the increasing use of intervention powers by @matthewpennycookmp.bsky.social. 🔗 below.
This pre-application advice may not reflect the views of the Local Planning Authority.
What’s the difference between Leeds and the New Brighton Adventure Golf Course? Leeds doesn’t have a tram.
What a brilliant book this is by James Cheshire. Beautiful photos of some incredible maps and the stories behind them. Cost me a fortune in old maps from eBay though!
A quarter of young children now live in the private rented sector. In fact, children are now more likely than adults to do so. 🏠 More in our last Housing Outlook➡️ buff.ly/SNjZ77G
Two people tried to enter a screening of The Odyssey without buying tickets after hiding inside a miniature model of the Trojan Horse. 😂😂😂
Agree with every word of this excellent post but especially this www.speakandregret.michaelinzlicht.com/p/my-p-hacki...
Local Authority fans will enjoy that today Lancashire were playing at home, in Cumbria, at a ground that was formerly in West Yorkshire.
Andrew Sissons@acjsissons.bsky.social · 2w ago#MetrobankFever is one of the few remaining good hashtags on the internet, a throwback in every way
This is amazing. Why we’ve got the costs of delivering a trans-Pennine tunnel linking Manchester with Sheffield completely wrong. An affordable, transformative project in the North? Sounds like something @andyburnham.bsky.social might be attracted to. open.substack.com/pub/limbostr...
Norse by Northwest
Why I need to build a tunnel under the Pennines
open.substack.com
Our recent research showed that residential planning applications are taking 3.3 times longer to determine than in 2010. Here, I've explored what's driving that slowdown and why it matters beyond the simply inconvenience of delay - including some brand new data! open.substack.com/pub/longwall...
If housing affordability is a supply problem, we’d expect the places building the most homes to be the most affordable - exactly what the data shows. No major US housing market has both high house prices and high build rates. There’s no reason to think England’s housing market is any different.
In our new research paper, we've looked at data from 132,000 major housing applications in England spanning the last 15 years to see how long it takes to get a decision for applications of different types and sizes. It's not a pretty picture... 🔗 www.strategiclandgroup.co.uk/insights/the...
This, of course, has happened on Andy Burnham’s watch.
Paul Smith@pmsmith.bsky.social · 2mo agoModern Britain.
I know Barca have a lot of players, but that’s some squad number.
This is possibly the greatest two hours of television I’ve seen. Partridge fans, in particular, will love it. CHEESE! CHEESE! CHEESE! www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
Cooper's Hill Cheese Rolling Races 2026
The Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling race is like no other, where participants throw themselves down Cooper's Hill after a wheel of Double Gloucester cheese
bbc.co.uk
Application fees are going up. Despite the good intentions, it’s hard not to see this as ducking a more difficult problem. The planning system is under-resourced not just because fees are too low but because it has become increasingly complex and inefficient. www.housingtoday.co.uk/comment/plan...
Planning application fees should only go up if the process improves also
Simply charging more for a broken system doesn't fix it. Here's what ministers should do instead to improve planning, writes Paul Smith
housingtoday.co.uk
