Pete Apps

@peteapps

Inside Housing + freelance elsewhere. Author of Orwell Prize winning Show Me The Bodies - How We Let Grenfell Happen.

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Pete Apps@peteapps· Jul 8

Overheating in blocks of flats is a problem, but it's worse if you're banned from opening the windows. Blocks undergoing cladding works need some bespoke guidance urgently: peteapps.substack.com/p/what-does-...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jun 12

Safe to say that Grenfell survivor Ed Daffarn is not overwhelmingly impressed with the current housing secretary:<img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HKmpFgUWgAAjHYI?format=jpg&name=small" alt="Image"/>

“And nine years on from the fire, we’re still in the same situation as we were. The present secretary of state [Steve Reed] is probably the worst that we’ve ever had, worse even than [Robert] Jenrick. It’s a low, low bar but it’s the truth,”

Pete Apps@peteapps· Mar 31

This is a quote about building safety, but I think it is reflective of how big industry-wide scandals often manifest, not just in construction and housing but across the board: peteapps.substack.com/p/nothing-ne...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Mar 18

Hello! I'm chairing a session at the forthcoming London Housing Summit where we will be discussing the distribution and demand for housing in the capital. Lots of great speakers across the day - register to attend here: forms.office.com/pages/respon...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jan 23

Always a pleasure to provide Reassuringly Boring content, which we could actually all do with a dose of sometimes (and also, generally, just love good high concept commissioned art for policy features, having been in so many design meetings of this sort down the years)

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jan 23

A nice thing this. The GP in this article who has written Gloria Don't Speak a "challenging but tender" book about a young woman with learning difficulties is... my sister! So pleased to see her amazing writing getting the recognition it deserves observer.co.uk/culture/book...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jan 2

There are far, far too many deaths in bar and club fires caused by pyrotechnics. These incidents are utterly horrifying, far too frequent and should be prevented. To this list (from Ed Galea) you can now add Switzerland and Goa:

Pete Apps@peteapps· Dec 15

Question and answer special in the Substack today, where I tackle the following questions from readers: peteapps.substack.com/p/question-a...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Nov 21

"I would make those people stand in front of the tower. I would make them stand and look at it" Building Safety Regulator chair, Andy Roe, asked to respond to commentators who call for the regulator to be axed:

“It is really straightforward,” he says. “I would make those people stand in front of the tower. I would make them stand and look at it, because it is the most profound manifestation of system failure. We can’t repeat that, and that is something people are too quick to forget.

“I think one of the great advantages of our background is that it’s not hypothetical for us. I have stood next to Charlie in too many awful spaces over the years, on too many streets in London thinking, ‘How do we get to this?’ ‘How did people end up living like this?’

“And while the Building Safety Regulator wasn’t working as it should, that should not be a reason in the short term to just step away and abandon it. The moral imperative is too great.”

This afternoon, he says, he is going to a boxing club with his son. Mr Roe has boxed and coached boxing his whole life. When he attended Grenfell, he knew where he was immediately because of the Dale Youth Boxing Club at the base of the tower – a gem in Britain’s feted amateur boxing circuit that has produced multiple world champions from the streets of west London.

“When I go into that space this afternoon, I’m going to be with people in an environment I’ve known since I was a kid,” says Mr Roe. “The warmth, the humour, the banter, the energy. And I know there’s estates and blocks all over this country that are exactly the same. And when I think about what motivates me, it’s that, it’s those spaces. It’s protecting them, and making sure they are safe.”

Pete Apps@peteapps· Nov 4

Latest Substack, looks into plans to let builders sell 'affordable' homes on the open market - and asks whether there is an 'idolatory to victimhood' in UK politics: peteapps.substack.com/p/sweeties-f...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Oct 3

Build baby build is not a housing strategy Bit by me for the Spectator: www.spectator.co.uk/article/buil...

Text extract reading:

Working out the way forward isn’t easy, but it is the job of serious politicians to at least try. That requires strategy, trade-offs, imperfect answers, compromise and a willingness to at least hear dissenting voices – not branding everyone who questions you a ‘blocker’ or NIMBY, and hiding behind a slogan that is as childish as it is facile.

For Reed, the buzz of his cosplay populism will soon fade. He has had his fun being cheered by delegates and surrounded by sycophantic think tank wonks who share his taste for silly hats. But the reality of the state of the economy and the size of the mess he has inherited will soon dawn on him.

In the coming weeks, he is likely to meet with leaseholders whose lives have been turned upside down by the building crisis, as well as survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire. When he attends these meetings, he would be well advised to leave his new baseball cap at home

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 28

Jess and I will be sharing a platform to discuss both books on October 23 at Pages of Hackney, if anyone can make it along!

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 28

... a boost. Thamesmead, south London - already a housing zone. Inner city densification in Manchester, hardly a new idea. Milton Keynes city centre, which was a new town originally but can't be again!

A list of developments which will likely become 'new towns', but in fact represent a series of existing areas of private sector development which will now receive enhanced government support

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 18

A shame this isn't going to be made retrospective. There's a few council press officers I could get banged up www.prweek.co.uk/article/1932...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 16

And with Vicky Spratt and Jessica Field at Pages of Hackney on October 25 pagesofhackney.co.uk/events-calen...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 16

The Conduit in Covent Garden with the amazing @Victoria_Spratt and @Kwajotweneboa - two really powerful voices on what's going wrong with housing and what needs to change theconduit.com/upcoming-eve...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 16

In Edinburgh on October 7 with @lighthousebks.bsky.social for anyone up there. There is a lot of commonality between Edinburgh's housing crisis and London's, so I'm looking forward to a good discussion lighthousebookshop.com/events/homes...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 16

On September 25 (publication day) at The Wanstead Tap in east London, with the institution that is the @newhambookshop.bsky.social (where I first went when I was about three months old, probably) newhambooks.co.uk/displaybook....

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 16

I have a few events coming up surrounding the release of my new book Homesick (out next Thursday). Really looking forward to discussing how we got into this mess and how we can get out with some great people (thread):

Pete Apps@peteapps· Sep 16

I know about the fiscal situation. But a heavily indebted economy post World War II still managed to push forward policies which engendered this kind of hope. We need some of that politics again, somehow.

There was criticism - it was uniform and monotonous in its architecture - but there was also a lot of hope. In its first years, the town was exclusively social rented housing, mostly houses, with private gardens. To those who were escaping the bombed out slums of east London, it was a paradise. “Some who read these pages at this time may feel almost as if they had wandered into fairyland, that it is too good to be true, that such things can have no relation to the present bleak and troubled days,” wrote the first chair of the development corporation of the first masterplan.

Pete Apps@peteapps· Aug 22

Finished copies of Homesick arrived! Out on September 25, pre-order here uk.bookshop.org/p/books/home...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jul 28

My new book, which tracks the impact the housing crisis has had on London since the 1980s and where the city is going in the future, is out on September 25. You can get 25% off if you pre-order with Waterstones here: www.waterstones.com/book/homesic...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jun 16

Around the country - and London in particular - developers are reducing their affordable housing contributions. Do we need a new model for building out large sites? Bit by me for The Developer thedeveloper.live/opinion/a-br...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jun 15

Then - just six weeks later - she and other senior directors got a business update from the French arm of the business, boasting about a big sale of 3,000 sqm of PE to "Grenfell Towers". Not one of them asked about safety

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jun 15

New: US bosses at cladding firm which sold material for use on Grenfell knew it was unsafe and knew it was being sold for use on the tower, newly released emails reveal www.thetimes.com/uk/london/ar...

Pete Apps@peteapps· Jun 12

Some thoughts on Reeves' big affordable housing announcements. Tl;dr - yes it is good news (and a pleasent surprise), but let's not get carried away: peteapps.substack.com/p/yes-it-act...

Pete Apps@peteapps· May 29

Sneak peak of the contents page:

Pete Apps@peteapps· May 29

I was born into a city where housing was affordable. But I've grown up into one where it was not. What has gone wrong in London over the last 35 years? And where is it going in the future? My new book, Homesick, tells that story. Out Sept 25 www.amazon.co.uk/Homesick-How...

Pete Apps@peteapps· May 23

For me, one of the problems with the implementation of the Building Safety Regulator is that industry is not used to having to work out compliance at the start. Changing that was always going to be a big disruption. But it absolutely needed to happen www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/assu...

Pete Apps@peteapps· May 20

This week's Substack somehow started with the fall out from a prolific fire engineer being suspended, and ended with my anxieties about AI destroying the scaffolding which supports creative careers: peteapps.substack.com/p/lessons-fr...