On Tuesday 7 October 2025, The Times journalist, David Smith, wrote “It’s time to go Dutch to solve Britain’s housing crisis”, drawing on a blog written by Bennett School Affiliated Researcher, Thomas Aubrey, founder of Credit Capital Advisory.
In his blog, Thomas Aubrey argues that the UK’s approach to funding infrastructure—through central government borrowing rather than self-financing public corporations—has undermined market confidence and constrained growth, unlike the Dutch model, which uses independent, revenue-generating public corporations to fund projects sustainably. He contends that Treasury accounting rules prevent the UK from adopting this proven approach, leading to weaker infrastructure, productivity, and housing outcomes compared with the Netherlands.
He is quoted in The Times as saying:
“The bond market appears to view the UK’s strategy of relying on increases in future taxation to pay back sovereign debt as the far riskier bet compared to the Dutch model.”
“Yet despite the lower risk and higher success of the self-funding public corporation model, the UK Treasury has ruled itself out from pursuing this approach. This is because it has unilaterally diverged from international accounting standards to include public corporation debt that is paid back by market sources in its fiscal rule — in stark contrast to EU economies.”
“This means that wealthy areas like Oxford, Cambridge, London and Bristol are not developing financially viable integrated housing and infrastructure projects by exploiting the land value capture rules introduced by the last government which unlocks up to an additional £10 billion per annum. The government hands grant to these wealthy places rather than others that are more in need of the funding.”
Read the article by David Smith in The Times
Read the blog by Thomas Aubrey on the Bennett School website
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy.
