Andrew Carter

NEW PODCAST 🎙️

@andrewcities.bsky.social is joined by Researcher @oscarselby.bsky.social to explore why London’s suburban high streets are doing better than many of the UK’s high streets and city centres.

Listen to the podcast 🎧👇
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New mayoral elections to be delayed in four areas of England The new mayoralties in Greater Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, Hampshire and the Solent, and Sussex and Brighton will now be contested in 2028.

🤦‍♂️

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

on cities I’m delighted to be here with you all in Birmingham, giving one of my first speeches as the new Minister for Local Government and…

Growing our economy needs a focus on our cities and towns...
medium.com/@Alison_McGo...

Politicians won't be delighted at this new concept of resigning to take responsibility for something having gone wrong.

Glad RF were among those offering support.

Richard Hughes resigns as head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, for an error he had nothing personally to do with, and which was in reality actually a net democratic positive for anyone wanting to understand and scrutinise the Budget

Don't Panic: Britain is not broken. The UK can do better, but we shouldn't be too gloomy about things. If you look at the stats, there's a lot to be happy with (including how happy we are): adamcorlett.com/2025/11/30/d...

Rightly lots of debates about growth this weekend - rightly because it was low productivity growth that saw wages entirely flatline during the 2010s.

Alongside this, HS2 Ltd is undertaking a sprint project that aims to identify and unlock opportunities for early release of land currently held for HS2 between London and Birmingham, around its stations and depot hub. This work is part of the reset of the HS2 programme and will support both regeneration and economic growth.

I mean, this is nuts - HS2 should be the lead developer and owner of the land around its stations, it should be the leaseholder for both commercial and residential property around the line. Why is Labour determined not to learn any of the lessons of why British rail was crap?

The electionification of most policy coverage is a good framing.
Imagine if all sports coverage was previews of forthcoming games rather than match reports of what had just happened.

The main takeaway from the leak: I think coverage was much improved by giving analysts, journalists and politicians earlier site of the documents. Release it at the same time next year, imo

I look at this chart and I think maybe the late twentieth century was just unusual.

The most interesting OBR paper yesterday was the one that didn't leak - the justification for their productivity downgrade. There's a very important assumption in it that could make or break the government.

NEW: I've crunched the stats and these are the places that could have highest proportion of mansion tax payers after today's #budget.

In Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea, more than a quarter of homes sold in the last three years were worth over £2m.

How should a tourist tax work for England’s mayors? - Centre for Cities This briefing argues that a Scottish-style tourist tax would be more appropriate for England than a Welsh-style tourist tax

Details to be consulted on. Big and important decisions to make on how it would actually work. Simply - welsh model = bad. Scottish model = good www.centreforcities.org/publication/...

Levy on overnight trips will help mayors invest in local growth England’s mayors will be able to invest in transport, infrastructure, and the visitor economy through a new levy on overnight stays.

Tourist Levy (tax) incoming www.gov.uk/government/n...

The minimum wage is not a cure all — we’re asking too much of business Politicians spend too much time uttering cheap rhetoric about cheap labour

My column in today’s FT: the vision since 2016 has been that the lever British governments pull to fight poverty is to increase the minimum wage. Time for government to start pulling its weight again too:

I meant to do a thread on this but got sidetracked. So a couple of thoughts…

English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill 2024-25 A briefing on the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill 2024-25

The English Devolution & Community Empowerment Bill is making strong headway in Parliament.

Report stage & 3rd reading are today and Tues.

More powers for England mayors, Supplementary Vote reintroduced, 2-tier councils replaced with unitaries, & stronger community right to buy powers. Briefing:

🛍️ How are London's high streets performing?

🚀Join us for the launch of new research into the factors that influence high street performance in London’s and why some places have more vacant shops than others.

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Tourist tax expected to be introduced for London London may introduce an overnight tourist levy, potentially raising £240m annually for the city.

And the other big cities

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Check out the latest edition of my @financialtimes.com newsletter. (1/2)

New York and California are losing their economic shine: on.ft.com/3KgTk0C

With insights from @scottlincicome.bsky.social, @taxfoundation.bsky.social, fDi markets, and Aziz Sunderji

If Starmer or Reeves wants to stand up and give a speech to unlock hundreds of billions of investment, birth thousands of new small builders and make hundreds of thousands of millionaires by the time he sits down, he should declare a Labour ‘Right to Build’ for homeowners.

Indeed. Look, if “all” that happened if we knocked down the terraced houses down the road from me is that we ended up with as much multi-use flexible office space and as many luxury flat sales in Bloomsbury as Kings Cross….cool, can fix a whole bunch of social problems that way too!

I like this post but it stops short. It might be that building loads of flats in central London doesn't reduce rents much, but that means it's creating an enormous and growing stream of rents. It's a gdp factory as @ironeconomist.bsky.social and I have discussed previously. And we need that too.

Britain’s tax system combines the worst of the US and Scandinavia The UK’s experiment in eating the rich while shrinking the state has left everyone worse off

 "so deep was the fiscal crisis that public spending was cut and taxes on the rich went up. The result is that Britain’s top 10 per cent is the only segment paying more in taxes today than in 2010" on.ft.com/4a6clNL

if this were more widely understood, Reeves' job would be somewhat easier

"it is low densities across the wider urban core (up to 5km in big cities) that is responsible for most of the gap, and where most change is needed to close it"

Also highlights the bonkers approach to private vehicle storage (takes up so much space).

Yep. Call more more demolition is in there.

We compare demolition rates in England with France and Japan 😱

nice imagery 👏

Remarkable new data and analysis of UK cities’ density problem. Tiny islands of lukewarm city centre development trapped tightly in a frozen sea of suburbia. TCPA was like an ice age descending on cities.

You might like this @jonnelledge.bsky.social