Adam Leaver
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adamleaver.bsky.social
Adam Leaver
@adamleaver.bsky.social

Prof of Accounting & Society at Uni of Sheffield; fractional Prof of Accounting at CBS; Director of CRAFiC & The Audit Reform Lab; veteran soulboy.

Economics 64%
Business 21%
OBR to downgrade UK productivity.

UK at or near bottom of the OECD investment league for 30 yrs.

Problem: City has short term horizons, direct state investment neutered.

China invests 40.4% of GDP in productive assets, India 30.5%, UK 18.2%, OECD average 23%.

Must abandon neoliberal constraints.
OBR productivity forecast may add £20bn to Budget hole
The OBR is understood to have downgraded the UK's productivity level in early Budget forecasts
www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Adam Leaver

B&M finance chief quits over £7m accounting error.

Its Audit & Risk Committee oversees effectiveness of internal control, internal/external audit. External auditors KPMG collected £1m in 2024/25.

£7m is a big sum to miss.

What else is flawed in B&M governance?
B&M shares plunge as finance chief quits over ‘embarrassing’ accounting error
The discount retailer said the issue has been resolved but will have a financial impact
www.independent.co.uk

Reposted by Adam Leaver

“That’s the biggest misunderstanding in this country of the housing crisis. That it’s a crisis reserved for the poorest people in insecure jobs…”

@drabioconnor.bsky.social talks to BBC Panorama’s Anita Rani as part of their investigation into the UK housing crisis.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...
Panorama - The Race to Build 1.5 Million Homes
The government’s made a very big promise: to build 1.5 million new homes in England by 2029. Anita Rani and Justin Rowlatt travel the length of the country to find out if it can be done.
www.bbc.co.uk

A big welcome to @drabioconnor.bsky.social who has joined CRAFiC as a @leverhulme.ac.uk Early Career Fellow. Her project is titled: ‘Following urban assetisation: a comparative theory of local state restructuring’ - I'm really looking forward to the findings... sheffield.ac.uk/management/p...
O'Connor, Abi , Dr
sheffield.ac.uk

This is genuinely great. Many thanks for this. The comments under the article are inexplicable.
My column in tomorrow's paper:
Starmer and Badenoch are handling the far-right march all wrong
A look back to the days of Enoch Powell suggests a better model
www.ft.com

Thank you for your kind words Hetan!

Reposted by Adam Leaver

Scrapping of audit watchdog for English councils ‘led to soaring costs and chaos’. Valuable report from @adamleaver.bsky.social & colleagues at the Audit Reform Lab
www.theguardian.com/business/202... (Full report here auditreformlab.group.shef.ac.uk/administrati...)
Scrapping of audit watchdog for English councils ‘led to soaring costs and chaos’
High critical report finds that instead of promised annual saving of £100m, fees have rocketed amid financial crisis
www.theguardian.com

Reposted by Adam Leaver

My column for Real Britain | The Mirror

➡️Brum bin workers are being told to take up to £8,000 worth of pay cuts or face #FireAndRehire while councillors' allowances increase and government commissioners – brought in to control the council – earn an eyewatering £1,200 a day.
Congratulations to @savannahcox.bsky.social on this fascinating new paper on 'infrastructural time', and how resilience measures are shaped by earlier investments....
First paper from a new project on the politics of energy crises and transitions in South Africa is out! I use the analytic of infrastructural time to make sense of (1) how such crises emerge and(2) the specific formations of "resilience" developed in response.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
The Infrastructural Time of resilience: Accounting for new (and old) forms of government in the South African grid
Temporality has long, if implicitly, structured geographic research on resilience—whether by underwriting scholarly endeavors to show how resilience a…
www.sciencedirect.com
Here’s the trailer for Episode 2 of #UrbanRadar

Stay tuned—full episode releasing soon!

Reposted by Adam Leaver

Successfully co-organized a 2-day workshop on the theme of Valuation, Space & Power this week, bringing together a brilliant group of scholars in Sheffield. Thank you to all the participants and fellow organizers @callumny.bsky.social @richmgoulding.bsky.social @adamleaver.bsky.social & Dan Tischer!

Reposted by Adam Leaver

This week, I was in Sheffield for the WS on @valspacepower.bsky.social. Met many ECRs interested in how economic value is constructed, where it is located, and who captures it. Thanks to Callum Ward, @adamleaver.bsky.social, @richmgoulding.bsky.social and @eyeofraf.bsky.social for the organisation!

Reposted by Adam Leaver

This was such a fun and stimulating workshop. Thank you to the whole organisational team and all the presenters - I learnt lots and enjoyed my trip to Sheffield 🙏

Reposted by Adam Leaver

Rafaella Lima @eyeofraf.bsky.social kicking us off by explaining how our workshop came about through a shared interest in value, calculation, critical accounting and economic geography

Reposted by Adam Leaver

Thames Water on collision course with govt over exec bonuses.

TW with £21bn debt, history of abuses & criminal convictions insists that it will pay bonuses, now calls them “retention payments”.

Govt must cancel it's licence, let it go bankrupt, prosecute execs, nationalise.
archive.ph/FpLe0
Thames Water on collision course with government over bonuses
Utility claims new legislation to block bonuses will not capture ‘retention payments’
www.ft.com
Agree people don’t know what councils do etc. But I also think the public is reasonable enough to question why the local area looks dirty/declining etc while council tax bills have gone up and up and up and up and up. Politically it’s therefore currently ripe for undeliverable promises

Reposted by Adam Leaver

An exciting new opportunity for ECRs - a call for papers is out now for our 'Valuation, Space & Power' workshop (see below)
Real household disposable incomes (RHDI) is forecast to rise by just £1,200 over the course of the 2020s.

That's less than it grew over the course of the 2010s,when it rose by £2,900.

Reposted by Adam Leaver

Report by @adamleaver.bsky.social and colleagues.
"This failure is partly the result of national policies, where national planning guidance in 2012 strengthened the capacity of developers to avoid affordable housing requirements on the grounds of ‘viability’47.

www.sheffield.ac.uk/crafic/news/...
New report critiques supply-side urban development
The new report, written by Richard Goulding, Adam Leaver and Jonathan Silver, critically examines the supply-side, property-led urban development model, using Manchester as a case study.
www.sheffield.ac.uk

Reposted by Adam Leaver

once more with feeling - failing to repair a roof is more expensive than repairing it, but only one of these costs appears in the accounts and is scored by the five year forecast.
Episode 2 of #UrbanRadar is now LIVE!

Dive into the informative conversation with @goodfellowtom.bsky.social @itsbethperry.bsky.social @pillmad.bsky.social @adamleaver.bsky.social @richmgoulding.bsky.social on #Manchester ‘s model of property-led development.

Available here-
lnkd.in/g-cxJ-B4
Episode 2: Is Manchester's model of urban development a good blueprint for growth?
Urban Radar · Episode
open.spotify.com

Reposted by Adam Leaver

Here’s the trailer for Episode 2 of #UrbanRadar

Stay tuned—full episode releasing soon!
What we’re witnessing in America is what happens when disordered discourse captures a political party, then the state itself. The Republican Party was the first to fall - abandoning truth for conspiracy, ideology for grievance, and policy for performative outrage.

Reposted by Adam Leaver

Terrific resignation letter by Anneliese Dodds, this.