The Wardman Wire

Iain Dale reports on a new Lib Dem policy to force the environmental upgrade of housing.

This has got to be a good thing if done competently. In fact, Mrs Thatcher should have tackled it twenty-five years ago.

The idea is that:

This policy at least has the merit that you can see it coming. You know that you will be forking out the extra cash when you want to make an alteration or move house - so it can be budgeted and planned for, and prices adjusted accordingly.

for in the extensionpricing

There are a doubtless few “gotchas” and “elephant traps” that are not obvious from the information released so far. I’ve spotted one already. As quoted by Iain:

“A typical cost of refurbishment would range from £5,000 to £10,000, though
some properties with exceptional features, particularly among those built before
1914, could cost more.” (p.10)

“Some properties could cost more among those built before 1914″ looks fishy to me. If you check the Social Trends data, you will see that fully 1 in 5 properties - that’s almost 5 million - were built before 1919.

That is a very large amount of “some properties”.