Oh dear… Labour is closing the Office for Place (OfP) before it has even begun its work. It was to have been located here in Stoke-on-Trent, and a few people were already working from a temporary office in the Civic Centre in Stoke town. It would have helped ensured good quality and design in new-build homes, and a liveable sense-of-place for new estates and even whole ‘new towns’, and would have done so from outside the Yes Minister confines of Whitehall. The abolition presumably clears the way for the Labour plans to throw up 300,000 cheap new houses per year.