On land, planning and building well.
Occasional, considered writing on the things that decide whether land becomes a good place: policy, the promotion market, and the difference between building a lot and building badly.
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PolicyThe 20% buffer is live: what a weaker five-year land supply means for your fields
A technical change to national policy quietly widened the door for well-located sites in the districts that have fallen behind on housing.
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PolicyThe tilted balance, in plain English
One line of national policy quietly decides a great many planning applications. It is worth a landowner understanding it.
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PolicyNew Towns are named: what it means if your land sits near one
A New Town in the neighbourhood reshapes the land around it. That can be an opportunity, and it can also be a compulsory purchase notice.
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DesignAgainst the estate that could be anywhere
Britain is short of homes, and building more of them is right. So why is so much of what we build so forgettable?
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LandPowered land: how the data-centre and AI land rush is repricing the countryside
The data-centre boom is real, but for a landowner the asset that matters is not the acreage. It is the grid connection.
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EstateSelling farmland after the 2026 inheritance-tax changes: land, tax and timing
For generations, farmland passed down largely outside inheritance tax. That has changed, and it changes the questions a family should be asking.
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PolicyGrey Belt, one year on: the golden rules and what they really deliver
The grey belt idea has now had a full year of real application. It has been misread in one direction and oversold in the other, and both are worth correcting.
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LandGrey Belt explained: is your land 'grey belt', and what that means
If you own land in the Green Belt, one relatively new term has quietly changed what might be possible on it. It is worth understanding properly.
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LandDoes my land have development potential? How to tell before you talk to a developer
You do not need a planning consultant to form a first view of your own land. You need the right questions, asked in the right order.
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Market1.5 million homes, the maths, and why permissions alone will not close the gap
The target is slipping, and the usual villains are the wrong ones. The gap sits in the pipeline between a permission and a finished home.
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NatureBiodiversity Net Gain for landowners: how habitat and BNG units can pay
There is a market for habitat now, and landowners can supply it. But the thirty-year commitment behind it is not one to take lightly.
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LandPromotion agreement or option agreement? A landowner's plain-English guide
It is the first fork in the road for any landowner approached about development, and the two paths reward you in very different ways.
Read · 8 min →