Does Britain Actually Have a Housing Shortage? | IEA Podcast

About this episode

The episode discusses whether Britain has a housing shortage, examining economic factors and recent legislative changes affecting infrastructure delivery.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Lord Frost is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director, and Dr Valentin Boboc, Senior Economist, to work through three of the week’s most pressing economic questions. The episode opens with a debate sparked by a Daily Telegraph piece from former IEA chair Neil Record, who argues that Britain may not have a housing shortage in the conventional sense. Niemietz and Boboc push back, examining how demand grows faster than supply as a country gets richer, why the rental market tells a far bleaker story than headline ownership figures suggest, and how over £70,000 of regulatory costs have been added per housing unit in recent years alone. The conversation then turns to the Planning and Infrastructure Act and its restrictions on vexatious judicial reviews, using the recent case of a solar farm as the first real-world test. The panel assesses whether cutting the artificial waiting period from 14 months to two months represents a genuine turning point for infrastructure delivery in Britain, or whether NIMBYs will simply adapt and find new avenues for delay. The final segment examines a warning from Conservative MP Neil O’Brien that…

People in this episode

Host: Lord Frost

Guests: Kristian Niemietz, Dr Valentin Boboc

Topics covered

• housing shortage
• economic questions
• rental market
• Planning and Infrastructure Act
• tax revenues
• infrastructure delivery

Keywords

• housing shortage
• rental market
• Planning and Infrastructure Act
• tax revenues
• economic questions
• Neil O’Brien
• NIMBY

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Institute of Economic Affairs, Daily Telegraph

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