Dear Chancellor
As you prepare for the first Budget of the Labour Government, we write to offer practical ideas and expertise that support an economic recovery by advancing a just transition, protecting public health and addressing government priorities for climate and nature.
UK Architects Declare is a network of more than 1,350 architectural practices of all sizes across the UK, with a shared declaration and committed to positive action on the climate and biodiversity emergency. Since our formation in 2019, we have led with practical guidance and policy, helped create a wider Built Environment Declares grouping and worked with the other networks within that and beyond.
Earlier this year, we held a Parliamentary launch for Building Blocks to Transform the Built Environment, a policy framework including early adoption measures that has been endorsed by a range of leading industry bodies. It emerged from our initial conversations with Ed Miliband, in his then capacity as Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, and evolved through discussions with our signatories, developers and many built environment experts. Building Blocks offers coherent and progressive recommendations to prioritise resource efficiency, kick start the circular economy, restore social and natural infrastructure and to secure the foundations for a just transition.
We support decisions for a Budget that will promote such policies. In particular, we urge you to adopt the following eight progressive tax initiatives for a just transition:
Carbon tax for a just transition: Implement ‘polluter pays’ and ‘conserver gains’ policies.
Enhance sustainable transport: Implement a frequent flyer levy - with all revenues to go towards subsidising long-distance trains.
Increase resource efficiency: Raise landfill tax and aggregates levy - with all revenues to go towards local community projects promoting the circular economy.
Reduce inequality: Create employment through shifting tax away from labour and onto materials.
Improve health and nature: Implement a ‘toxin tax’ on substances that are harmful to biodiversity or human health - with all revenues to go towards restoring nature and water quality.
Rebalance VAT and reduce fuel poverty: Reduce VAT on refurbishment and increase VAT on new-build developments.
Reduce waste: Implement an obsolescence tax on wasteful short-life products - with all revenues to go towards VAT reductions on products sold with a lifetime guarantee or a ‘right to repair’.
Fairer housing for all: Increase tax on second homes and empty properties - with all revenues to go towards building social homes.
With these tax proposals we ask you to introduce a Budget that will create greater social equality, share growing economic opportunities and restore our natural systems, for the wellbeing of all.
We welcome an opportunity to meet with your Treasury team and other government departments and to share our expertise and ideas.
Your sincerely,
Alasdair Ben Dixon, Anna Lisa McSweeney, Anna Pamphilon, Anna Woodeson, Carrie Behar, Chloe van Grieken, Craig Robertson, Deepthi Ravi, Julia Barfield, Kevin Logan, Laura Baron, Mandy Franz, Michael Pawlyn, Tom Gibson, Tom Greenall, Zoe Watson
UK Architects Declare Steering Group
13 September 2024