Departmental news

WMG has been chosen to deliver the Innovation Lighthouse Programme, designed to empower and upskill small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Bromsgrove and Redditch. Combining WMG’s manufacturing expertise, academic and research excellence, and world-class facilities, the programme will help SMEs grow whilst becoming more competitive and resilient. 

Three Warwick Medical School academics have been named in Clarivate’s Highly Cited Researcher List 2025.

This week we are delighted to interview Professor Christine Schwöbel-Patel, Public Lectures Coordinator and Co-Director of CCLS, for our Warwick Law School Staff Spotlight series.

Dr Amrita Kulka and Dr Nikhil Datta have analysed billions of UK homebuyer searches, rental and sales listings, actual build patterns, and planning applications in a bid to discover why decades of house building targets haven’t solved the UK’s housing problems.

Their results are presented in WhereToBuildLink opens in a new window, an online mapping tool which provides visual evidence to local and national decision makers and stakeholders about where housing is most needed, and what type of development is in highest demand across Britain.

They have found that:

• Decades of planning targets haven’t solved the UK’s housing problems, with demand outstripping supply and prices and rents becoming increasingly unaffordable
• New research published todayLink opens in a new window finds that new homes are increasingly being built in areas with low demand, poor access to jobs, and limited amenities.
• The government has pledged to tackle the problem with 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament – but this will only help if they are built in the right places.
• Using real house search data, Warwick researchers have calculated where and how these homes should be built to meet actual demand, and made the results available in an online mapping toolLink opens in a new window and local-authority specific reports.
• Policymakers and stakeholders can use this research to build houses where people actually want to live.

Alongside the tool, the researchers present 350 tailored reportsLink opens in a new window - one for each local authority in England, Scotland and Wales – and the full report Solving Britain's Housing Crisis: Where and How to Build 1.5 Million HomesLink opens in a new window

It is hoped these free-to-use resources will help planners and policymakers make informed choices

In the deep dive report, Dr Kulka and Dr Datta present two new measures of demand at very local levels – housing gap and housing tightness – and conclude that part of Britain’s housing problem is that new houses haven’t been built in the places people most want to live:

• 70% of new builds offer worse job access than the average existing home; this rises to 80% for commuters using only public transport
• 18% of all new builds are in villages or towns without a secondary school or GP up from 11% in 2010.
• Only 29% of new builds since 2010 were in high-demand densification areas, despite these areas accounting for 50% of the housing gap.

Where should we build?

The researchers created two new ways to measure housing demand.

• The housing gap is the difference between the number of people searching for a home and the number of available properties in an area. It reflects how many home-seekers are affected by a shortage. It is the most accurate and complete measure of where people want to live, independent of other constraints such as price and availability.
  
  
• Housing tightness is the ratio of demand to supply. It reflects how competitive it is to find a house to buy or rent in an area.

Using these measures, Dr Datta and Dr Kulka are able to show every local authority in Britain where the hotspots of demand truly are.

They find that it isn’t just London and the South East with demand outstripping supply:

• UK cities containing areas with the biggest gap between supply and demand are Bristol, Manchester, Salford, Edinburgh, Portsmouth, and Sheffield. Within London, the boroughs with the biggest gaps are Kensington & Chelsea, Westminster, Camden, Tower Hamlets, Hammersmith and Fulham, Islington, Hackney, Newham, and Wandsworth. Neighbourhoods within Wandsworth have the largest gap in the UK.
• UK cities containing areas with the tightest housing markets include Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow, Lancaster, Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Portsmouth, Hull, Sheffield, Swansea, Cardiff, and York.

Locations with a large gap or high tightness should be urgent priorities for new housing.

Dr Kulka explains:

Looking at the government’s goal of 1.5 million homes, our method suggests that more of that housing should be allocated to northern areas such as Leeds, Manchester and North Yorkshire to close the gap.

Our analysis also shows us that understanding how demand varies within a local authority is just as important, if not more so, than looking at demand between local authorities, if housing is to be developed in the right places.

By mapping gap and tightness for each Output Area in Britain, the WhereToBuildLink opens in a new window online tool clearly shows the areas within each local authority that should be prioritised for development when local plans are updated, and highlights areas where new housing is unlikely to sell quickly or even at all.

How should we build?

The researchers also used the data to show which types of development are best placed to solve the UK’s housing shortfall.

Dr Datta and Dr Kulka identify four patterns of development – new rural developments; small town extensions; urban extensions; and densification.

Recent new building has focused on urban extensions but the greatest impact on housing demand could be achieved by increasing the amount of housing in urban centres:-

• 50 per cent of the gap could be closed by densification in places such as the London Boroughs of Wandsworth, Islington, and Camden, as well as in Bristol, Manchester, Salford, Portsmouth and Edinburgh.
• 28 per cent of the gap could be closed by urban extensions, with North Tyneside, Richmond upon Thames and Kingston upon Thames as priorities
• 16 per cent of the gap could be closed with small town extensions, with development around Dorchester in Dorset, Sheringham in Norfolk, and Saltburn in Redcar & Cleveland as priorities.
• 6 per cent of the gap would be addressed by creating new rural developments, in places such as Port Isaac, Polperro and Mousehole in Cornwall, Lower Largo in Fife, Jaywick Sands in Essex, and in East Suffolk near the coastal area of Southwold. However, rural demand may partially reflect the desire for second homes.

Solving Britain's Housing Crisis: Where and How to Build 1.5 Million HomesLink opens in a new window also highlights where the planning system itself is a barrier to solving the housing crisis. For example, 26% of the housing gap lies within areas of special planning designation such as green belt or conservation areas.

Dr Datta explains:

Over 15% of the total gap lies within greenbelts and this is particularly restrictive for the growth of cities in the north including Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Bradford, Leeds and York. Releasing restrictions on just the tenth of greenbelt area with the highest demand would close more than half of the greenbelt housing gap. Our mapping tool can help planners and policymakers make informed decisions on whether conservation or affordability should be the priority for a local community.

11 November 2025

NOTES:

• Visit: https://warwick.ac.uk/cage/wheretobuild for the mapping tool and the local authority reports
• Read: Solving Britain's Housing Crisis: Where and How to Build 1.5 Million HomesLink opens in a new window. Nikhil Datta and Amrita Kulka, with research assistance from Jawad Wehbe, Edoardo Badii, Harshita Anandan and Matthew Stubbs. CAGE Research Centre Policy Report, November 2025
• Download the executive summary: Solving Britain's Housing Crisis - Executive Summary 

Shreya Sinha Roy, a fourth-year PhD student, has recently been announced as one of the 21 recipients of the IMS 2025 ICSDS Student Travel Award. Her research introduces 'prequential posteriors' as a likelihood-free approach for data assimilation. She will travel to Seville to present her work at ICSDS 2025 in December.

University of Warwick has received a transformational £10 million philanthropic gift from alumnus Tim Hartnoll to establish a pioneering new research centre dedicated to sustainable electrical chemistry research for new forms of batteries.

The world’s first cap-and-trade market for particulate matter, implemented in the Indian state of Gujarat through a pioneering partnership between the Gujarat Pollution Board and a team of researchers including Professor Anant Sudarshan, was one of the three finalists in the Clean Our Air category of this year’s Earthshot PrizeLink opens in a new window.

The four researchers who collaborated with the Gujarat authorities to design, launch and evaluate the project are Professor Michael Greenstone (University of Chicago), Professor Rohini Pande and Dr Nicholas Ryan, (both Yale) and Professor Sudarshan.

Earlier this year the impact of this pilot formed the subject of an article in Quarterly Journal of EconomicsLink opens in a new window finding high compliance, over 20 percent reductions in industrial emissions, and no increase in costs.

Commenting on the Earthshot nomination, Professor Sudarshan said:

“The Earthshot Awards are an opportunity to engage with some of the most exciting and important work on protecting our planet from across the world.

“We were the only academic research nominated, providing a wonderful opportunity to catalyse real world impact. Our team has already begun engaging with Brazil on their planned nation-wide carbon market in addition to scaling up the market in other parts of India.”

The Earthshot Prize was founded in 2020 as the personal initiative of HRH Prince William to discover and support the best examples of climate and environment leadership and problem-solving around the world. Each year 15 finalists are chosen from thousands of nominations, across 5 Earthshot themes. All 15 finalists each year become members of The Earthshot Fellowship programme.

The 2025 Clean Our Air finalists were the State of GujaratLink opens in a new window, for pioneering the world’s first trading scheme for particulate emissions; the City of GuangzhouLink opens in a new window, for its rapid transition to electric buses and taxis; and this year’s winner, the City of BogotaLink opens in a new window, for coordinated action across transport, freight, and green infrastructure to improve urban air quality.

Commending the Gujarat scheme, the Earthshot organisers said:

“the scheme is now regarded as gold-standard evidence that emissions trading is not only environmentally and economically beneficial, but it can succeed in tackling the severe pollution challenges faced by rapidly developing economies in the Global South.”

Opening the Rio awards ceremony, Prince William said:

“Our finalists are a shining example of how we can build stronger economies, design healthier cities, and create better jobs for the next generation. When we unite, our momentum is unstoppable – the momentum to achieve truly astonishing impact, faster than imagined.”

Building on the momentum from the successful Gujarat scheme, the research team has launched an Emissions Market Accelerator partnership to work with governments across the Global South who are interested in exploring whether a similar market approach will work for them.

6 November 2025

• Read about the emissions trading market project on the Earthshot website: The State of Gujarat - The Earthshot Prize 2025 Finalist
• Read our news reportLink opens in a new window about the emissions trading market .
• The research team was awarded funding to scale the market by the University of Chicago, J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI), and J-PAL South Asia's Solutions and Advancements through Research for Water, and Air (SARWA) and Alliance for Scaling Policy Impact through Research and Evidence (ASPIRE).

The Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTaxLink opens in a new window), jointly founded and led by Warwick Economics Professor Arun Advani, is a key member of a coalition of think-tanks from across the political spectrum which has today launched a call for fairer, pro-growth reform – without raising overall levels of taxation.

Tax Reforms for Growth, co-authored by experts from think tanks including the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation (CenTax), the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the IPPR, the Adam Smith Institute, the New Economics Foundation, Bright Blue and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), outlines seven revenue-neutral reforms that they argue would make the UK’s tax system fairer, more effective and more pro-growth.

The team of authors spans the political spectrum but share a view that the UK’s tax rules are outdated and distortionary, that they are holding back investment and productivity – and that change is possible whatever the overall tax take.

The report highlights seven key areas for reform:

1. Replace outdated property taxes with a modern system based on current values. This would involve abolishing Stamp Duty and reforming Council Tax and Business Rates.
2. Lower VAT while broadening the base. Compensate lower income groups for higher costs on basic goods.
3. Address marginal income tax rates that punish work. This includes reducing the marginal rate that applies to the removal of childcare subsidies.
4. Tax income from work equally. Merge Income Tax and National Insurance to remove distortions.
5. Tax landlords on profits as other income. Allow a full deduction for mortgage interest costs, or equivalent allowance for the cost of borrowing.
6. Reform Capital Gains Tax. Introduce an ‘investment allowance’ while tackling exemptions.
7. Reform Corporation Tax. Give upfront tax relief for all business expenditure and end the capital/income distinction in tax law.

The joint report was launched on Wednesday 5th November at a Parliamentary reception attended by MPs from all parties.

Professor Arun Advani, Director of CenTax, said:

The UK’s tax code is riddled with inconsistencies and distortions that discourage investment, penalise work and hold back productivity. There is widespread agreement on the need for proper reform. The upcoming Budget is an opportunity for the Chancellor to look at the taxsystem as a whole, and ensure that whatever the total tax take, any changes are also serving her growth mission.

Robert Colvile, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, said:

There are all kinds of disagreements among think tanks about the ideal level of taxation, but a surprising level of consensus about the problems with the current system. Whatever your political position, it’s hard to argue that we have a tax system that’s clear, consistent and pro-growth. Hopefully, politicians will be inspired by the broad support for tax simplification across both left and right.

5 November 2025

Photo: Yuan Yang MP speaks at the report's Parliamentary launch.

• Tax Reforms for UK Growth is a joint publication by Andy Summers – Director, Centax; Arun Advani – Director, CenTax; Carsten Jung - Associate Director for economic policy and AI, the IPPR; Chris Belfield – Principal Policy Adviser, JRF; Dan Neidle – Founder, Tax Policy Associates ; Robert Colvile – Director, Centre for Policy Studies; Hannah Peaker – Deputy CEO, New Economics Foundation; James Howat – Chief Economist, Labour Together; James Lawson – Chairman, Adam Smith Institute; Ryan Shorthouse – CEO, Bright Blue
• All proposals are revenue neutral and reflect areas of consensus among economists and policy experts across the political spectrum.
• Read the full report on the CenTax website hereLink opens in a new window.