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Ant Breach

@antbreach.bsky.social
2.9K followers 479 following 1.4K posts

Director of Policy and Research at Centre for Cities, working on Housing, Planning, Devolution. Stuff on Ukraine + Eastern Europe and Japan + East Asia too. YIMBY. Views own etc. 🥑🇺🇦

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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
For Burnham to reach his (tricky) goals on council housebuilding, he'll want his cash to go as far as possible - we've set out how: Four takeaways: 1. Focus on cities 2. Give councils balance sheet flexibility 3. Get mayors to distribute cash 4. Be broad-minded on defining council housebuilding:
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Maurice Lange @mauricelange.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I have a new paper out today on what Andy Burnham needs to do to achieve “the biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-war period”. A coherent (I hope) to-do list, explaining the contingencies and pre-empting potential missteps. Do read the paper in full, but here's a 🧵
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Centre for Cities @centreforcities.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Lots of fiscal devolution is on its way for 2028 but the first step to fiscal devolution is arriving almost a year before... @antbreach.bsky.social on why business rates devolution is underrated👇 buff.ly/ZCmMLWn
buff.ly
Business rates devolution is underrated - Centre for Cities
Enhanced business rates retention is key to fiscal devolution – but there is still more to come.
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Cities are only 9% of the UK's land area, but contain 61% of the country's jobs Sign up to our Substack for more data and charts like this every Tuesday!
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Some great charts in this Given our welfare system is not very contributory, big Qs for British policymakers here on how we get more women into paid work if we want immigration to be fiscally positive
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Maurice Lange @mauricelange.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A seriously impressive and useful report out today from my colleagues @oscarselby.bsky.social and @antbreach.bsky.social They've worked out how fiscal devolution can start in a fair and growth incentivising way, in superb technical detail. Give it a read 👇
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Mark Byrne @markobroin.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Nice coverage by @bruceandy.bsky.social on our @centreforcities.bsky.social report on *how* HMT needs to give away tax powers to England's mayors. www.reuters.com/world/uk/eng...
reuters.com
English regions should be funded by local taxes, not grants, think tank says
England's mayors should be funded from taxes raised in their own regions rather than government grants, with safeguards so poorer areas do not lose out, ​a think tank said on Wednesday as ministers re...
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Oscar Selby @oscarselby.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Fiscal devolution for mayors: the government have announced it, here is how to do it: 1. Switch mayor's Integrated Settlements (grants) to a share of income and corporation tax - where 90% of funding is income tax and 10% is corporation tax.
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Our new report does the numbers on fiscal devolution. By letting the metro mayors keep around 7% of their local income tax (2% in London) and 2% of their local corporation tax (1% in London), we can replace grants in a growth-positive, cost-neutral way for HMT and the mayors:
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
@richardaljones.bsky.social hi Richard - hope all well. Would like to DM you about a research project we're working on at CFC - could you follow me back please so I could drop you a message? - Ant
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Matthew Holehouse @matthewholehouse.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
A heartfelt plea for a little help from struggling family firms like uh Greene King and Marriott International (market cap: $90bn)
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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
fantastic article about an underappreciated housing villain, NIMBY preservationists the funniest part is that another prominent NIMBY just launched a 24-tweet screed against this article, simultaneously decrying the lack of decorum and complaining about the “YIMBY bros cult”
Layla Law-Gisiko *afi @laylaLa...•2h @
22/ So, my question is: can we have a sound and well articulated debate about housing, zoning and preservation without the use of rhetorical tricks such as straw man, false dilemma, post hoc causation, cherry-picking, metric switching, and appeal to ridicule?
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Layla Law-Gisiko *eafi @laylaLa...•2h O
23/ Descartes had a useful rule: accept as true only what one clearly knows to be so. Urban policy could use a little more of that, and a little less certainty veiling for evidence.
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Layla Law-Gisiko 5afi @laylaLa... 2h $ ...
Ad extremumm/ @GVSHP Village Preservation and its ED Andrew Berman must have rattled the YIMBY bros cult pretty badly. LEND!
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Simon Jeffrey @simonjeffrey.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
My sense is UK lacks in leisure infrastructure too. Pricing shows chronic undersupply of Center Parcs in UK. Every major city should have one in their vicinity. And a massive indoor beach/water park/spa resorts. Every Mayor with new spatial planning and call in powers should allocate sites for both.
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Simon Jeffrey @simonjeffrey.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Surprised and delighted to see the tourist levy as top story on the BBC News
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
This is the first big step towards fiscal devolution. Major wins here on local autonomy are percentage rate (compared to flat fee) and no capping Together this means the visitor levy will provide a strong growth incentive for mayors who choose to introduce it + can be held accountable for results
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Mark Byrne @markobroin.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Interesting chart from my colleagues @violaviz.bsky.social @oscarselby.bsky.social Related work coming tomorrow and next week, on how to make fiscal devolution work. (Subscribe for weekly charts, here: substack.com/@centreforci...)
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Maurice Lange @mauricelange.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
In new research from @Centreforcities published yesterday, we find British big cities are broadly rubbish at putting houses near transport. Densities are the same (and sometimes lower!) near to rail stations than further away. France and Japan show that much better than this is possible. 🧵
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Our new report looks at what building new homes (especially flats) around stations could plausibly achieve in cities. Right now, the answer depends on something obvious Some cities - e.g Manchester - have many more rail and tram stations they can build homes around than others e.g. Leeds:
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Daniel Sugarman @danielsugarman.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The world's most notorious custard-pie thrower is dead. What an obituary. He got Bernard-Henri Lévy seven times.
​Known to his army of fans as L’Entarteur or Georges le Gloupier, Godin launched his career as a serial deflator of egos in 1969, when he planted a tarte à la crème on the face of the French novelist Marguerite Duras (“She has a kind of intelligence and cleverness that serves only her own vanity,” he complained), and he went on to “pie” a cast list of celebrities for sins ranging from pomposity to “choosing to function in the service of the capitalist status quo”.The same could not be said of Bernard-Henri Lévy, one of France’s “new philosophers,” whose provocative views on sex, frequent appearances on television and penchant for white silk shirts unbuttoned practically to the navel, had made him a cult figure – and one of Godin’s most satisfying victims.

Levy once declared: “I am the most gifted writer of my generation,” and often boasted of his reasonableness and tolerance, but he was forced to endure footage being repeatedly shown on French television of himself, covered in cream, during a visit to the Belgian city of Liège, trying to strangle Godin and shouting: “Get up, or I’ll kick your head in.”Noël Godin was born on September 13 1945 and came to pie-throwing after a rebellious youth in which he scandalised the priests in the confessional by speaking of his “horrible sexual life”, and was thrown out of Liège University after emptying a pot of glue over the head of a law lecturer who had helped write the constitution for the Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar.

He found work at Friends of Film, an obscure magazine published by the Belgian Catholic League. It had a tiny readership, which was just as well, as Godin made up most of his articles. In one he claimed that Louis Armstrong had once been a cannibal and had invested in a film called The Vegetables of Good Will in which Claudia Cardinale played a giant endive.

In another he conjured up a fictional blind Thai filmmaker named Vivian Pei, describing her film, The Lotus Flower Will Never Again Grow on the Edge of Your Island, in such convincing terms that an Asian film specialist travelled to Thailand in an effort to track her down.“We’re very careful not to hurt people,’’ he explained. “Well, they are hurt, but always in their amour-propre.”

In 1995 Godin published an autobiography, Cream and Punishment. His other targets over the years included the New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard (who charmed his assailant by hailing the attack as a homage to silent film), the French politician Nicolas Sarkozy, the choreographer Maurice Béjart and the Ryanair chairman Michael O​’Leary. He tended not to pick Belgian victims, he explained, because few would notice if he did.
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Jack Tindale @jacktindale.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
No he should...never be allowed to drive ever again?
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
It would be a terrible shame if this resource was lost for want of an archive - this stuff is still of major interest to policymakers today and is a crucial part of the social history that made the Britain of today (HT @municipaldreams.bsky.social )
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
About a month until 8,000 volumes on British postwar planning and housing history gets pulped. Unless we can find someone to save it municipaldreams.substack.com/p/a-good-hom...
municipaldreams.substack.com
A Good Home Needed Urgently for One of the Most Significant Libraries of Housing and Planning in the Country
The trustees of the Octavia Hill Birthplace Museum are disposing of its Harry Simpson Memorial Library in September, next month.
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Alex Hern @hern.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
[same point but phrased as a positive]
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Great stuff - more politics, less process in planning please!
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cones @coneshotline.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
just got the best photo back from our wedding
local bride poses smiling with a knife, husband terrified
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Well yeah. Not much of the fashionable stuff that gets prizes is appealing to me or my friends. Guys are still buying Blood Meridian and The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - who writing today is trying to sell books to those readers?
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Left Outside @leftoutside.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Important: the data source for schools is just an 1868 report. People do read these things eventually! Wonks and civil servants take note, please keep producing reports and storing them in accessible, resilient, multimedia ways, and open your archives.
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
Only the Mayor can protect us from Westminster Council
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
We are seated for: Jet Lag Japanorama
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M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Food desert discourse is fascinating as an extreme case of progressive policy breakdown: bad academic research, leading to bad policy papers, leading to (mostly) bad policy that wastes a lot of time/money, in response to a problem that either doesn't exist or is created by some other policy.
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
My immediate thoughts on today's Devolution Document It's a huge set of proposals that will fundamentally change British politics and the national economy Making mayors accountable for growing their taxbase + committing to giving them what they need to do this is a gamechanger Thread:
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Yes to bringing back the Audit Commission and standardising metro mayor accounts so Mr and Mrs Joe Public can understand and compare local taxes. No to worrying so much about scrutiny that we end up being less ambitious on devolution or permanently attaching a Whitehall leash to the metro mayors.
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Great thread below on the full gamut of powers coming down the track
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Rob Johnson @rjson.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
The tax retention news is so big it has overshadowed some of chunky stuff in the press release that complements it and fills out the devolution strategy pursued by the new PM. Some initial reactions by me and some @centreforcities.bsky.social thinking below to get you started 👇
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Andrew Carter @andrewcities.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
This is big deal. www.bbc.com/news/article...
bbc.com
Andy Burnham to give regional mayors share of income tax
The prime minister says the move will give power to "every postcode" but critics say the plans lack detail.
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Chris Curtis MP @chriscurtis94.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Important chart below from @centreforcities.bsky.social More fiscal devolution means more growth, and many reasons to think the effect could be even bigger in the UK.
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
Looking forward to hearing more about this tomorrow from the PM. Tax sharing is a very substantial pro-growth reform that will help reverse one of the biggest mistake of the Thatcher era.
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Important piece by @antbreach.bsky.social this -stamp duty is bad, we should replace it. Council tax could work better - but for god's sake don't centralise it:
centreforcities.org
Centralising council tax would make Burnham’s job more difficult - Centre for Cities
Proposals for replacing council tax are common and it should be reformed, but it shouldn’t be centralised.
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Ross Mudie @rmudie96.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
This is still the best policy option re council tax (or indeed any property tax) reform IMO - would like to see it lifted up towards the top of the pile in the in-tray, not least because it could be introduced relatively quickly!
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Council tax is a bad tax. But most proposals to replace it get the wrong end of the stick. Rather than centralising council tax and handing out more grants, the solution is the opposite. If we devolve council tax we can cut bills for 2/3 of people across England. Quick thread:
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
For the first time, we're hiring an intern to join our external affairs team! If you or somebody you know would like to start their career in public affairs for a first rate think-tank working on topics at the top of the British political agenda, click below!
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Correct decision, obviously. Genuinely there are quite a few Labour MPs I just want to ask “without googling, how many parliamentary seats do you think there are in the south?”
ft.com
Andy Burnham rejects northern Labour MPs’ call to abolish council tax
Downing Street says it is not considering replacing the levy and stamp duty with a new property tax
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Simon Jeffrey @simonjeffrey.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Sets out the devo project clearly. Of the risks within, the RDA-lite quality of the geographies in some places worries me most. If you can't figure out a name for your new authority without the contortions of an '& !, 'of' or a point of the compass, you're setting up failure.
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Mark Byrne @markobroin.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
Excellent on both the detail and purpose of the devolution push. Including a helpful reminder (re: references to Scotland and Wales) that English regions are not countries. And as @samfr.bsky.social says, fiscal devo is about getting growth incentives right. (If you're not subscribed, do it!)
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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Do it.
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
This would be the most important local finance reform since Elizabeth I. Finally introducing local revenue sources that aren't property taxes will ensure places really benefit from local growth - more jobs and/or higher wages in a place will translate into more investment and services:
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Sinem Adar @sinemadar.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
I do not know what trajectory Özgür Özel's new party will set for Turkey. Too early to tell. What I know is that the fact the 67 per cent of the CHP MPs joined it - knowing that they will highly likely face repression - is a strong democratic defence of political representation.
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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
My favorite part is when Musk says more Europeans die from heat than Americans die from guns. Musk asks why The Economist doesn't write about air conditioning. She explains they do. "Pro-air conditioning?” asks Musk. “Very pro-air conditioning,” she responds. “You should read us sometime.”
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Ian Rennie @theangelremiel.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Who are these weirdos? And why are the BBC interviewing them?
'Bus price hikes led us to irreversible shift to driving'
published at 15:34
15:34
Adam Clarkson
BBC Your Voice

Katerina Bowes pictured with her husband and their child
Image source,Katerina Bowes
Katerina Bowes and her husband used to take buses everyday for their commutes to work and to take their child to nursery, but as prices increased in Plymouth in 2025 the option became unaffordable for them.

The Plymouth couple ended up learning to drive and purchasing a car to save money.

"It took my husband a long time to learn as it’s very difficult to find an instructor and a test slot, but in May 2026, he passed his test. Now we almost never use buses anymore."

The 29-year-old says that even if bus prices go back down their switch to driving is "irreversible". Bowes says they've "already adopted a new lifestyle" and invested a lot of money on making the move from public transport to having their own car.

"The cap is not likely to help us. It just maybe makes us feel bitter".
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Ant Breach @antbreach.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
Drilling in the North Sea won't have any measurable impacts on British energy prices/terms of trade, but it will have measurable impacts on the global climate? Eh?
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