Westminster’s eyes are moving onto housing as the election gets closer. While Gove waves the flag for his leasehold reform, the Centre for Policy Studies has been busy calculating how badly we’ve been doing on housbuilding in recent years. Now that net migration is at 1.1% of the population, a population equivalent to the city of Birmingham has arrived to the UK in the last two years. The housebuilding target for England remains set at 300,000 homes per year with an assumption of net migration at 170,500. At least the government have blown one figure out of the water…

The CPS has calculated England should be building 515,000 homes annually, 73% higher than the official target, and that we’ve underbuilt over the last decade by around 1.3 million homes. Meanwhile, the Adam Smith Institute has commissioned polling from JL Partners which manages to tease some support for building on greenbelt land out of the public. They’ve worked out that a policy in which a proportion of the profits from development from greenbelt land “goes back to the community” in some form has net support both among the general public and mortgage holders. The 18-24 age range is most in support, though monetary or “community” compensation will be needed to convince the public to build meaningfully. Prizes to be won for whomever can think up the right housing scheme to offer voters…

The Levelling Up Department has finally called time on work-shy local councils running four-day week ‘trials’ across the country. The guidance is pretty clear: “Local authorities that are considering adopting it should not do so. Those who have adopted it already should end those practice immediately.” If councillors keep snubbing the office the government says it’ll “consider options“. Whenever they feel the need to work, they lie down until it goes away…

This has been a big campaign for the TaxPayers’ Alliance – head of campaigns Elliot Keck says now’s the time for councils to “follow this guidance and deliver value for money for taxpayers“. Breaktime’s over…

Gove-ian rhetoric has reached new heights at Tory Conference as the Levelling Up minister called Keir Starmer “the jellyfish of British politics: he’s transparent, spineless, and swept along by the tide”. Guido notes the nautical theme among Tory seniors after Mordaunt called Starmer “Beach Ken”…

Michael Gove has the best attack line of the day…

“Sir Keir Starmer is the jellyfish of British politics; transparent, spineless and swept along by the tide.”