Where special tax treatment might make sense is on the semi-detacheds. One side able to get a ‘marriage value’ loan from bank/local housing fund + stamp duty holiday to buy the other side when it comes up for sale to assemble the site easily. Clawback if construction doesn’t start within x years.

I’m not as doubtful. Plenty of credit available especially with the planning certainty there. Perfect use for various local housing funds like GM’s. Enough eligible detached homes coming up for sale to get things started and make a difference as Croydon showed.

As one approach it makes sense for people who don’t want to move and a model some firms could specialise in but what would the legislation do here? No capital gains on any second home sale in the development?

It’s a Manchester City Council competence and approach rather than GMCA. More Bernstein than Burnham. Once the Devolution Bill goes through and he has full strategic planning powers though I would not be surprised if he starts trying to prematurely raise taxes on developers and ballses it up.

OK. Sounds ludicrous to me.

Nimby has a logic in the current system - try to force development that doesn’t (very narrowly) benefit you somewhere else. But when ‘Right to Build’ adds £500k to your property value and your neighbour wants you to sign a petition to take that away? No chance.

I wasn’t talking about terraces. And there’s still plenty of London not in conservation areas.

It’s a tweet with a character limit not a white paper. Exclude conservation areas, SSSIs and all that. But I reckon a lot of conservation area owners would be thinking very hard about the exact value they’re getting from the special character being protected.

Labour should have come in on day one with a signature ‘Right to Build’ policy for any detached or pair of semi-detached homes within 1km of a tram or train station (or anywhere, really). Mint hundreds of thousands of millionaires overnight, millions of new homeowners over time.

Would be good to know what other local independent traders who don’t sell coffee and cake think of a hugely popular bakery moving into a big vacant unit will mean for business.

We set up a UK Municipal Bond Agency and now we're shutting it down.

Must be very satisfying just constantly trying to predict and solve these puzzles.