About this episode

The episode discusses insights from Jamie Rumbelow and Henry Dashwood on Britain's housing crisis and their experiences with the planning system.

Space is tight in the King Charles III Space Station’s dining room this week — ten million pounds a square metre, the collapse in housebuilding having consequences even in orbit — which is fitting, because coming through the airlock are two men who tried harder than most to fix it. Jamie Rumbelow and Henry Dashwood founded Tract, the venture-backed startup that set out to speed Britain’s planning system up with software. Two years later they returned the capital and wrote the postmortem everyone in British tech has read. But this episode isn’t about that postmortem. It is about what Jamie and Henry learned when they pulled back the curtain on the people who are meant to be building Britain’s homes. With sincere apologies from production, this interview has sat in our backlog since last autumn. Nevertheless it is, perhaps unsurprisingly given the subject, utterly timeless. Our thanks to Henry and Jamie for being so patient. The episode explores * How Jamie was radicalised by The Housing Theory of Everything * Why £1,600 a month makes housing a moral issue * What a land promoter actually does: title deeds, unanswered letters to farmers, and a month of knocking before anyone will…

People in this episode

Hosts: Tom Ough, Calum Drysdale

Guests: Jamie Rumbelow, Henry Dashwood

Topics covered

• housing crisis
• planning system
• real estate
• technology
• interview
• British tech

Keywords

• housing crisis
• planning system
• real estate
• NIMBYs
• land banking
• housebuilding
• Tract

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Tract

Places: Britain, King Charles III Space Station

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