The late Professor Peter Ambrose saw the 2008 crash coming; "plus ca change, plus ce meme chose". 

As chair of the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust I commisioned the late Professor Peter Ambrose to write the 2005 Z2K Memorandum to the Prime Minister on Unaffordable Houisng. The Prime Minister did not ask for it; we thought he needed it. The late Lord Alf Morris sent the memorandum to Tony Blair who replied he had read it with interest. 

For many years earlier Peter Ambrose was among the few who saw the 2008 financial crisis coming. I fear he might say there is another one on the way.

He wrote; 

"We argue that there have been failures of vision, collective memory, strategy and regulation that have wasted many billions of taxpayers' money. The deregulation of financial markets in the 1980 sparked off a flood of house purchase lending that has underpinned massive house price rises and consumed £600 billion of investment that could have found a better use renewing our infrastructure or in research and development to make Britain more competitive in a global market rather than in bolstering house and land prices.

The increasing commitment, from 23% to 72% of GDP since 1980, to house purchase loans seems unsustainable. Furthermore the increasing flow of demand side subsidies are working to enrich landlords and land vendors, not to stimulate more housing output. The analysis shows that more money has gone into housing but fewer houses have come Out. Housing benefits and allowances have imposed a huge and increasing burden on state finances.

The failure of planning authorities to use existing powers, and to support innovative community-based freehold retaining development trusts and partnerships, has permitted large-scale speculation in building land. The failure to seize upon and develop innovative building practices and land use patterns that would minimise carbon emissions is producing more environmental costs than can be calculated.

While it is the poor and vulnerable that suffer most obviously from unaffordable housing and overcrowding, and this is ethically indefensible, the additional costs arising from mismanagement of our housing arrangements fall on society as a whole - on our health, education and policing budgets, on old and young alike and on the optimum development of our economy. 

We can no longer afford these failures; they need to be addressed."

Rev Paul Nicolson, 9/9/2016