James Riding

How to deal with a midlife crisis — get in a car and keep driving The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits is the story of a man who escapes his ‘C-minus marriage’ by taking an impromptu road trip across America

Great to see Ben Markovits longlisted for the Booker Prize for his novel The Rest of Our Lives - a slim study of middle-aged ennui set on the US highway.

Here's my review for @thetimes.com

www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

Loving this month's cover @insidehousing.bsky.social!

How a deep retrofit project is creating affordable housing again, after 200 years The Duke of Westminster’s property company is using deep retrofit to turn an 18th-century London street into affordable housing. James Riding visits the project

A street in Mayfair where William Blake once lived is being refurbished and turned back into housing - including 11 affordable homes.

I took a look round and spoke to the developers about the “mind-forged manacles” of conservation policy

www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/how-...

Sir Keir Starmer exclusive: keeping our housing promises In an Inside Housing exclusive, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer sets out how his government aims to boost affordable housing and homeownership

The prime minister writes exclusively for Inside Housing today

He discusses the new Affordable Homes Programme and warns “if we don’t build more homes, the consequences will be dire”

www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/sir-...

A new chapter for Inside Housing Inside Housing is expanding to cover new sub-sectors of housing. James Riding, living markets editor, explains why

We have lift-off. The first Inside Housing Living Bulletin has been sent!

To find out why we have widened our gaze to the wider residential market, read my column

www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/a-ne...

Great scene from Martin Amis's Money about a one-sided tennis match between overweight alcoholic John Self and lean young Fielding, "raised on steaks and on milk sweetened with iron and zinc"

Big news today at Inside Housing - we are expanding our coverage beyond social housing. My colleague @jamesriding.bsky.social, who is leading on our new patches, explains why we’ve made this decision:

JLL predicts the government's new £39bn Affordable Homes Programme could fund up to 500,000 homes over the next decade or 50,000 a year "at a stretch".

Note they would be spread between social rent, affordable rent and shared ownership. And gov target is 1.5 million homes of all tenures-in 5 years!

For now, this is a rare bit of good news as Britain faces down its horrendous housing shortage.

I wouldn't go as far as saying we are so back, but we're sort of back

Will the government go all-out for numbers to help meet their 1.5 million new homes target, or prioritise building homes for people on the lowest incomes?

We'll see by the end of summer when Homes England has designed the new Affordable Homes Programme.

So far Labour has directed around 60% of grant funding towards social rented homes.

If they keep this ratio, we could still see total affordable house building remain level (or even fall), despite the funding boost.

But the homes that are built will be much more affordable.

The question now is: how many homes will we get with all this cash? It comes down to which tenures Labour wants to prioritise.

In 2010 we stopped building social rented homes, the most affordable tenure but the most expensive to build, in favour of higher 'affordable rent' homes

The rent settlement is a shot in the arm for social landlords. Their finances have been hobbled for almost a decade and many have cut back on developing homes.

Rent convergence will help to rebuild capacity and hopefully scale up housebuilding.

This works out as £3.9bn a year for affordable housebuilding - a significant boost from the £2.3bn a year given out under the Conservatives.

Making the programme 10 years, up from five, creates certainty for developers and will help with large projects like new towns.

Now we know what Labour's “biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation” amounts to. I was prepared for the worst, but it's actually very positive news.

🏠£39bn grant funding over 10 years
🏠10-year rent settlement for landlords - with rent convergence

Remember American Dirt? Or more likely, remember the controversy around American Dirt? Five years on from her cancellation, Jeanine Cummins has produced a new novel about an Irish-Puerto Rican family. I liked it a lot: it's summery, romantic and a pleasure to read

"Cummins, who is not Mexican, had committed the grievous sin of imagination."

The American Dirt author returns — and this time she won’t be cancelled In her new novel, Speak to Me of Home, Jeanine Cummins takes her Irish-Puerto Rican heritage as inspiration for a multigenerational love story

My review for @thetimes.com here www.thetimes.com/article/61b7...

Remember American Dirt? Or more likely, remember the controversy around American Dirt? Five years on from her cancellation, Jeanine Cummins has produced a new novel about an Irish-Puerto Rican family. I liked it a lot: it's summery, romantic and a pleasure to read

“Sub-editors busied themselves with their humdrum task of reducing to blank nonsense the sheaves of misinformation which whistling urchins piled before them” - Evelyn Waugh, Scoop

Really enjoyed this fresh, smart funny romcom @riversidelondon.bsky.social - Writer/actor Keelan Kember is a winning mix of Hugh Grant and Will from the Inbetweeners

How to deal with a midlife crisis — get in a car and keep driving The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits is the story of a man who escapes his ‘C-minus marriage’ by taking an impromptu road trip across America

In today’s @thetimes.com I review Ben Markovits’s new novel - the story of a man who escapes his ‘C-minus marriage’ by taking an impromptu road trip across America. It’s also a good excuse to use one of my favourite Peep Show quotes

www.thetimes.com/article/93d6...

Perhaps the most alarming development for Mirror hacks, however, came one morning last week when they were told executives from Tesco would be sitting in on their daily news conference, where upcoming stories are pitched and the shape of the paper's coverage decided. The same thing, they were told, would be happening on other Reach titles, including the Star. Stories published on the Mirror website in the days following included: "Major Tesco updates: 93 stores roll out "milestone' change after successful trial", "Tesco's huge change to all products as it trials move across 12 items"; and "Tesco announces big change to its F&F clothing range — and shoppers will love it" Every little helps!

Incredible story in the new Private Eye about Tesco executives sitting in on the Daily Mirror’s news conference, and stories favourable to Tesco appearing in subsequent issues of the paper:

This is amazing from @londoncentric.media - the councillor who oversaw the sale of London’s most expensive council house in 2013 has now entered a prize draw to win it for himself!

Stock transfers and development deals: the new wave of delivery by for-profits For-profit housing providers have entered the affordable housing space. Who are the biggest players, who is backing them and what strategies they are taking?

Private capital is pouring into affordable housing — and Inside Housing is stepping up its coverage to match.

Today @jennymessenger.bsky.social and I dive into the growth of for-profit housing providers, who collectively own over 40,000 homes.

www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/stoc...

Proud of my showing in the April issue of Inside Housing

🏘️I went to Cranbrook, Devon to learn how (and how not) to build a new town

🏘️Investigation into for-profits and how private capital is shaping housing (with @jennymessenger.bsky.social)

🏘️Interviewed Places for People CEO Greg Reed

Homelessness firm owned by London councils at risk of closure Capital Letters, the company set up by a group of London boroughs to address homelessness, is at risk of closure, Inside Housing can reveal.

Exclusive: Capital Letters, the company set up by a group of London boroughs to address homelessness and reduce spending on temporary accommodation, is at risk of closure

www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/exclusi...

The case against Right to Roam Nature will suffer if we let the British public — and their dogs — loose on the land, argues Patrick Galbraith in Uncommon Ground

The Right to Roam campaign is demanding more access to the English countryside in law. But Patrick Galbraith is opposed. I reviewed his curious-minded counterblast for @thetimes.com

www.thetimes.com/culture/book...

It all boils down to a simple truth: there will always be a portion of society who cannot afford to pay market rate for housing.

First we built them social homes. Then we paid their private rents via housing benefit. Now we pay – through the nose – for them to live in hotels.

It has put more pressure on councils, who now spend £2.9bn a year on poor-quality temporary housing for homeless people including hotels and B&Bs.