We should be focused on increasing the number of homes, particularly family homes, while also improving their aesthetics. Too many developments look like very tall, soulless, human greenhouses that some of us would not even place our house plants in; they are that ogreish.
When a city becomes transient, something deeper is lost. It is not just about the cost of rent. It is about the quiet erosion of community.
We must pivot from restrictive, punitive measures that disproportionately squeeze lower-income households toward a strategy built on common-sense and innovation.
If ministers keep making laws that only make sense in Westminster, the people on the front line will always keep fighting those two battles as I did.
All the state interventions in the world, debates about safeguarding young people, youth clubs, and so on will not make a serious enough impact if we keep ignoring the home environments our young people are growing up in.
It will be a missed opportunity if police chiefs allow the perception to take root that British policing is now in the business of picking sides.
One force can complete vetting of officers in two months, while another can take up to eight months. In Bedfordshire, we are part of a closer Tri-Force collaboration with Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire.
Work is under way in Bedfordshire to ensure a common local framework on absenteeism which is to include engagement with the child.
The first part of a series on ConHome this week about the politics of race in Britain today.
My front-line experience will be invaluable to me if I am elected to serve as Bedfordshire’s next Police and Crime Commissioner.
We may need to move towards a mandatory minimum sentence to send a clearer message.
However, its current focus on urban chicken shops risks excluding rural areas, where ‘county lines’ criminality is a growing concern.
Bright but disruptive pupils are allowed to stay while less able but equally troublesome children are dumped. It is illegal, but it happens nonetheless.
We must turbo-charge the vehicle of British entrepreneurship as we drive across the Brexit bridge which should connect us with the rest of the world.
A housing market that traps people in homes they own only on paper undermines trust, mobility and productivity, while a society that blocks younger generations from ownership risks breeding resentment and disengagement.