Research Context We are living through an era marked by crises through which dominant ideas are being challenged. The climate crisis, the Covid-19 crisis, the ongoing effects of the Global Financial Crisis, the housing crisis - the political ruptures and debates engendered by these connected issues appear to be fracturing a consensus of liberal ideas that has held for the last 40 years. One area in which this is particularly evident is land - specifically the issue of land ownership and the ownership of land value. Who should own land and who should own the value associated with land have always been highly political questions. This has become even more evident over the last decade as the crisis in supply of affordable housing has assumed greater importance on the policy agenda. This is because it is partly from land value increases that new affordable housing and the infrastructure required to support new housing development is funded. The policy area related to this is called 'land value capture' or 'betterment' policy. The housing crisis has therefore put significant pressure on governments to do something about the problem of housing supply, housing affordability and land values. This is currently prompting policymakers and politicians in England to consider potentially radical ideas. Some of these ideas are being supplied by the think tank and campaign industries that have an interest in land policy - and these ideas are now being increasingly reported in the non-specialist press. We are therefore living through a moment where there is significant potential for a rethink of fundamental questions concerning land ownership and the distribution of land values and what these values are used to pay for. This has traditionally been a technical and specialist policy area but thanks to the politics of the various crises that characterise the current moment, land value policy is now part of mainstream political debate. This is changing the politics of land and housing. Aims and Objectives The aim of the research is to analyse and understand the politics of contemporary debates concerning land values in England in their historical context. This will aid understanding of the forces that drive and constrain change in national land value capture and betterment policy so that we can better understand what kinds of solutions might be acceptable in the future. To achieve this the research seeks to develop a clear and systematic understanding of: - how national land value capture and betterment policy has been shaped by the politics of the past; - how and why political debate concerning land value capture was relatively silent in the 1980s to early 2000s; - why this area of policy has recently returned to live political debate; and - the nature of the politics of contemporary debates concerning wealth held in land and the intervention of the state in the ownership of land value for the benefit of society. Potential Applications and Benefits The project will develop a methodology for applying political theories for the analysis of political ideologies to analyses of policy change. It will bring into the open the latent political theoretical concepts which are core to debates about the ownership and distribution of increases in land value. The importance and potential societal benefits of land value capture and betterment policy will be disseminated to the non-expert public via blog posts and non-specialist policy briefings. By bringing together a network of specialists to discuss the politics of land value capture, a community of experts will be established which can subsequently push this research agenda forward. The project will provide up-to-date data and insights regarding the national policymaking process in England which will be of use to policy experts who wish to influence debate and the direction of national policy regarding land.

The PRIME project will broaden understanding of online harm and how it can be mitigated through new systems, tools and processes by focusing on Minority Ethnic (ME) communities' experiences of digitalised services, particularly in the areas of housing, health and energy. We will draw on knowledge, methods and skills from social policy, cyber security and privacy, data mining and machine learning; human computer interaction, applied linguistics and educational technology. Working closely with REPHRAIN, we will engage with a wide range of individuals from ME communities, community organisations, public agencies and energy suppliers to identify and categorise the nature of the harms experienced, and assess the adequacy of existing systems and processes to counter them. We will translate this knowledge into the co-design and co-production of novel, effective and scalable social and technological harm-mitigating solutions through a Citizen-led Race Equity Living Lab (CREL). The outputs will include policy guidance in the fields of housing, health and energy as well as cross-cutting recommendations for improving online services more generally; educational resources for harm mitigation to enable individuals and organisations to more effectively protect themselves; as well as better privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) that counter discriminatory processes in digitalised services. We will also produce benchmark datasets, tools and models to enable organisations to address ethnic inequalities in service provision and demonstrate more accountability to the public in terms of greater transparency and equitable service outcomes.

Community consultation is important for ensuring that we get a built environment that is fit for purpose and could be an opportunity for serious dialogue with the community about how best to make places for everybody, rather than the perfunctory and excluding affair it often is now. There is to date little consensus on how best to gather community responses to planning proposals to feed into the design and development of successful (high social, environmental and economic value) places. Ultimately community consultation has largely untapped potential for learning how the design of buildings and places can be done better, particularly important in the Climate Emergency and for 'building back better' in the aftermath of the pandemic. Although the focus of the project is on the UK, the problems are global and the outcomes scalable. In some parts of the country community consultation ceased during the pandemic, with decision making being delegated to pressurised Planning Officers who may not always have the interests of the community at heart. An imminent government review of planning in England is seeking to make the system more streamline. This could jeopardise community consultation which is known for being difficult and slow. A robust, inclusive, value for money format (digital and physical) for gathering data on what communities want from their buildings and places in the long term is urgently needed. To create such a platform is the aim of CCQoL. Led by the University of Reading, with Co-Investigators in all four countries of the UK, CCQoL is a collaboration with the Quality of Life Foundation, the community consultation platform Commonplace, inclusive consultation experts Urban Symbiotics and the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CACHE). It is supported by a wide range of policy and industry organisations including the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Civic Voice and the British Property Federation. Following a review of best practice in community consultation, user experiences (face to face and digital) will be designed for piloting on real planning applications in each of the four countries of the UK. Consultations will take place in an 'urban room', a community space, disused shop or pop up in the city with parallel, but interconnected, consultations on line. Community members will be asked to contribute to the making of maps to show what they value in the area and to anticipate the potential impacts of the planning proposal. A variety of experimental formats will be used to make the consultation as engaging as possible. Locally based Community Partnership Managers will be employed to encourage inclusive participation. The platforms will be refined based on learning from the pilots. The main output will be a digital format for community consultation. This will link to the CCQoL platform, a series of digital maps which will offer a standardised format for gathering data on what communities want on an ongoing basis, scalable for use elsewhere with potential applications for other spheres of decision making. The Quality of Life Foundation and Commonplace will be responsible for the further development of the platform beyond the life of the project. Guidance for delivering face to face consultation on the ground will also be developed, as well as a series of reports on community consultation for each of the four UK planning contexts. This pragmatic project will be underpinned by robust academic research published through a series of refereed journal papers. A generation has grown up designing virtual environments in games such as Sim City. CCQoL will provide the next step towards a digitally generated and constructed, co-created built environment. The foundations of such a future need to be designed with great care to ensure that it fulfils its positive potential.