Bob Blackman: Homelessness remains a blight on our society

Local authorities are still waiting until people are actually homeless before offering assistance. This is expensive and has an unnecessary impact on vulnerable people.

Andrew Potter: Building cheap, cramped and poorly-insulated homes is a false economy

If we are going to build 300,000 homes and ensure public support, quality really counts. Let’s have new homes that we can be proud of for hundreds of years. 

Nicholas Boys Smith: Why do we build fewer homes proportionally than most other countries? Where’s the smoking gun?

We should move from a planning permission-led system to a building permit-led system. Design rules should be strict, clear, but limited.

Five years on, cutting the spare room subsidy has been vindicated

Work has been rewarded. Predictions of rent arrears increasing have been proved false. The number of households penalised has fallen from 660,000 to 381,000.

Andy Street: Rough sleeping is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to homelessness

Ultimately, we are working to ‘design out’ homelessness entirely, by helping at-risk people before they get to a crisis point.

Peter Walker: By defining all construction jobs as ‘low-skilled’, the Migration Advisory Committee is making a serious mistake

The description is misleading, and will deter young people from entering the sector. Ultimately, it will constrain the labour supply needed to build more houses.

Having seen off his critics, Scruton sets out the case for beauty

Buildings with different functions need to be intertwined. In beautiful cities, people tend to live and work side by side.

David Davis: There has long been an alternative to this discredited deal. It’s the Canada-style plan that Tusk and Barnier offered us.

If we need to leave with no deal and negotiate a free trade agreement during the transition period, so be it.

There are signs of modest progress in increasing the housing supply

Probably enough is being done to maintain the status quo. The problem is that for millions of people aiming for home ownership, that is pretty dire.

Barry Wood: In Britain, the numbers opting to build a home is way behind other countries. But not in Cherwell.

Over ten years we are providing 1,900 new homes for Oxfordshire. They will be a wide range of properties. That is because we believe in choice.

The beauty of Scruton

The campaign against him is driven by the knowledge that May agrees with his views on design – and fear that the Government will act on them.

What Americans can teach us about local democracy

It should be easier to call local referendums in the UK. Politics is too important to be left to the politicians.

William Shawcross: May and Brokenshire must not let Scruton be hounded from his post

His long career evinces both a real understanding of issues such as antisemitism and a philospher’s willingness to change his mind.

Judy Terry: Slashing red tape would mean more Suffolk homes

Here is one firm’s account of how unnecessary costs and delay in the planning system holds them back. Timescales promised by councils are not honoured.

Howard Flight: The best part of a week on, we can see that last week’s Budget was a popular one

The Chancellor has been fortunate that the public finances have improved substantially at a particularly convenient time.