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Preparing for CIL : the Need for a More Rounded Ap...

Last week’s Planning article on the first wave Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) charging schedules (Variable Rates, pp20-21) makes for interesting reading. A lot of the discussion in recent months has been on the scale of the levy to be charged and the article summarises the different rates being proposed across the six most advanced CIL areas. These include a proposal for a £70/m2 flat rat...
Are Low Skilled Adults The Real Lost Generation?

All the media attention in recent months has been on tuition fees, and warning of the potential dangers of a lost generation. At the other end of the spectrum, there has been very little said about the changes being made to the adult skills agenda. Unlike tuition fees, these changes haven’t been greeted with riots outside Westminster, but could rapidly undo the years of gradual progress achieved...
Warning: the environment can seriously improve you...

In the last week two major publications have appeared: the UK National Ecosystem Assessment (NEA) and the Natural Environment White Paper. The NEA is the world’s first attempt to place a monetary value on the natural environmental at a national level. There isn’t space to do justice to this monumentally vast (2,000 page!) document. But it is worth looking at its main findings and the implicatio...
New Enterprise Zones – worth all the fuss?

The dust has settled a little after the 2011 Budget and what’s happening about Enterprise Zones has become a little clearer. I’ve had a good look at the EZ Prospectus published by DCLG and read between the lines (see http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/localgovernment/pdf/1872724.pdf). What’s the scale of EZs this time round? The Government has announced that there will 21 EZs in England...
Housing: Alleviating a Demographic and Labour Mark...

The debate about how we pay for the future costs of pensions and care for our increasingly ageing population is well advanced. But there is another debate yet to be had, in relation to long term decisions about housing provision. How to ensure an adequate future workforce for local businesses and economies should feature more prominently in debates about housing numbers up and down the country....