Deputy PM Angela Rayner announces plans as she presents £350m funding increase for affordable housing
Rogue landlords in England will face curbs on how much housing benefit they can receive if their properties are substandard, Angela Rayner has said as she announced an extra £350m for affordable housing.
The deputy prime minister presented the funding increase, adding to £500m already announced at the budget, as part of the government’s drive to build 1.5m homes.
Continue reading...New UK ambassador to US says is hoping to persuade Trump administration to maintain isecurity guarantee for Europe and boost growth
During PMQs yesterday Keir Starmer implied there were national security factors not in the public domain that explained why the government was so committed to transferring sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Alex Wickham from Bloomberg says he has cracked the secret. It is all to do with the International Telecommunication Union, apparently. He explains this in a post on social media. Here is an extract.
The US and UK currently have full and unrestricted access to the electromagnetic spectrum at the Diego Garcia military base, allowing them to securely control American and British military and diplomatic communications in the region, as well as monitor hostile activity from foreign states, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity discussing sensitive information …
The US and UK are members of the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency based in Geneva, Switzerland which coordinates the electromagnetic spectrum and global satellite communications. If an international court was to rule in future that the US and UK were using Diego Garcia to run satellite communications in breach of international law, that would have consequences for the base and defense and technology companies involved in supply chains used there, the people said, highlighting the need to secure its legal status.
There must be no forced displacement of Palestinians, nor any reduction in the territory of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian civilians should be able to return to and rebuild their homes and their lives. That is a right, guaranteed under international law.
The UK is clear that we must see a negotiated two state solution, with a sovereign Palestinian state, which includes the West Bank and Gaza, alongside a safe and secure Israel with Jerusalem as the shared capital that has been the framework for peace for decades.
Continue reading...Families placed in hotels in England are being forced to live on snack foods, putting young people’s health at risk
Homeless children placed in hotels are developing rickets and other diet-related health problems because their parents lack anywhere to cook.
The Magpie Project, which works with homeless mothers in the east London borough of Newham, where more households are living in temporary accommodation than anywhere in the country, said families living in hotels were eating an unhealthy diet of takeaways and snack foods because they had no cooking facilities or anywhere to store fresh produce.
Continue reading...Coroner’s report finds Sarah McGreevy died after climbing on box on sixth floor balcony to unblock pipe repaired with tape
A woman who accidentally fell to her death from the sixth floor balcony of a Hackney council block was trying to fix a blocked drainpipe that had been repaired using “heavy duty tape”, a coroner has found.
Sarah McGreevy, 37, died on 16 June after climbing on to a wooden box on the balcony to manually unblock the pipe, a common practice among residents of the fifth and sixth floors of the building after heavy rainfall, according to the coroner’s report.
Continue reading...Treasury plans £5bn total investment in housing supply and a reduction in discounts under the right-to-buy scheme
The Treasury has announced an extra £500m for social homes in the budget, in what appears to be a compromise with the housing department, led by Angela Rayner, over the scale of ambition required in the sector.
The promise of an additional £500m for the government’s affordable homes programme (AHP) is intended to add up to 5,000 extra social homes. The Treasury said it will bring total investment in housing supply to £5bn.
Continue reading...Deputy prime minister tells Labour conference she expects chancellor to make promise on building at spending review
Angela Rayner has given her strongest hint yet that Labour will announce a major package of social housebuilding in next month’s spending review, saying the party will have abandoned its “moral mission” if it fails to do so.
The deputy prime minister told an event at Labour conference on Sunday she expected the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to make a promise on social housing next month, with the government under pressure to build hundreds of thousands more social homes.
Continue reading...The 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London was the result of ‘decades of failure’ by central government, the public inquiry into the catastrophe has found. The Guardian’s John Harris looks at the findings of the report with the social affairs leader writer Susanna Rustin. And, as Labour continues to warn ‘things will get worse before they get better’, we are joined by the economists James Meadway and Ann Pettifor to discuss whether a painful period of austerity-lite is the only way through the storm
Continue reading...Rachel Reeves works on plan for 10-year formula to give councils and housing associations certainty
Social housing rents will rise by more than inflation over the next decade as part of UK government plans to boost affordable housebuilding and shore up the finances of struggling landlords.
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is working on plans to introduce a 10-year formula to calculate social rent on homes that will result in rents increasing every year by the rate of the consumer prices index – which is now 2.2% – plus 1%, removing an existing cap on rises.
Continue reading...Clarion case among several ‘severe maladministration’ examples highlighted by housing ombudsman
The UK’s biggest housing association has been fined after a watchdog found that its failure to carry out repairs to a child’s bedroom window for four years left the home mouldy and caused serious illness in the family that lived there.
Clarion housing association showed “no urgency” to fix the window, instead leaving it boarded up, despite repeated complaints from the tenant who said the mould caused his asthma to flare up and affected his son’s mental health.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Lawyer says move by state government shows residents being treated ‘as an afterthought’
The Victorian government is forging ahead with plans to demolish three public housing towers subject to a class action seeking to stop the redevelopment.
The move was described by a lawyer for residents as an example of them being “treated as an afterthought”, after the supreme court ordered the class action could proceed to a two-day trial earlier this month.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Rose Jackson says losing public housing in expensive central suburbs leaves society worse off, and this week’s state budget will address issue
A decade ago the only way to secure a bed in Sydney’s brutalist icon, the Sirius building, was a proven need and time on the social housing waitlist. Now the price of admission starts at $1.55m – for a studio apartment.
The last of the 76 apartments in the redeveloped complex in the shadow of the Harbour Bridge are on the market after the building was sold to a developer by the former Coalition state government for $150m in 2019.
Continue reading...Investigation under way into cause of explosion at social housing complex in Sydney’s west that left one woman dead
The New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, has indicated there could be more money on the way for social housing stock and repairs in this month’s budget after a woman died when a townhouse with a history of suspected gas leaks in Sydney’s west exploded.
Mhey Yumol Jasmin’s body was found in the rubble on Monday morning after two days of searching at the Whalan social housing complex, where two gas meters were found to be damaged in recent months.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Data reveals that 77 people died before being offered public housing between April 2019 and March this year
At least one person has died every month before finally being offered public housing in New South Wales, new data has revealed.
Data provided to Guardian Australia after a freedom of information request shows that between April 2019 and March this year, 77 people who had already died were offered housing. This included 12 people in 2020 and 2021, 17 in 2022 and 11 in 2023.
Continue reading...Angela Rayner to promise party will build homes on sites by end of its first term and support private developers
A Labour government would aim to announce the sites for a series of new towns within a year of taking office, with the promise that homes would be built in them by the end of a first term, Angela Rayner is to say in a speech.
Giving more detail to a plan first outlined in Keir Starmer’s party conference speech in October, Rayner will tell a housing conference that Labour will strongly support private developers who create high-quality and affordable housing.
Continue reading...Former Foreign Office minister had suggested some in government were prepared to overlook human rights violations
Members of the National Education Union have voted to delay moving to a formal strike ballot until they know the detail of the government’s pay offer for 2024/5.
Delegates attending the NEU’s annual conference agreed the offer - when it comes - should be put to members in a snap poll and if rejected with a convincing turnout, move to a formal ballot for industrial action.
After achieving an overwhelming majority vote in our recent indicative ballot, NEU conference committed to intensify its campaign to win a fully-funded, above-inflation pay rise and greater resources for schools and colleges.
Education is on its knees, struggling to cope with a crisis never seen before in our sector. And the responsibility for this lies squarely at the door of secretary of state for education Gillian Keegan and 14 years of mismanagement and underinvestment by a government that does not care.
The Greens claim their policies could lead to at least 150,000 extra council homes a year being built. In his speech, Ramsay said these would come from a mix of new-build, refurbishments and exisiting homes. This is one of several policies intended to increase the supply of affordable housing. In its press notice the party says:
The policies the Green party would introduce to help councils increase the supply of affordable housing include:
-Providing funding to councils to meet their needs for affordable social housing and lift the overly restrictive rules on council borrowing for housebuilding – ensuring at least an extra 150,000 council homes a year are made available through a mix of new build, refurbishment, conversions and buying up existing homes
Denyer said the Greens were aiming for a record number of seats in the local elections. She said:
We are aiming for a record number of seats in the city and to lead the next administration. We know there is a huge appetite for the bold progressive approach of the Greens here, like in so many other towns, cities and villages across the country.
We go into these local elections with around 760 councillors on nearly 170 councils in both urban and rural settings and Greens being a governing party in 10% of all councils in England and Wales already.
She claimed the Greens had “more ambition” than any other party. She said:
When times are hard we need more ambition, not less. We need to rise to the scale of the challenges we face and be clear that not doing that is a political choice. Leaving millions of children in poverty is a political choice. Letting our NHS fall into chaos is a political choice. And failing to commit to the green investment we need is a political choice.
At the Green party, we’re making a different political choice. We choose to listen to what people need. We choose to see the cost of living crisis for what it really is, a widening inequality crisis. And we choose to offer solutions to fix it.
Denyer and Ramsay confirmed that the Greens are focusing on four seats in particular at the general election. They are Brighton Pavilion, where Siân Berry is the candidate, hoping to succeed Caroline Lucas; Bristol Central, where Denyer is the candidate; Waveney Valley, where Ramsay is the candidate; and North Herefordshire, where Ellie Chowns is the candidate. According to the YouGov MRP poll published yesterday, only Berry is on course to win. But Ramsay claimed he had a good chance because last year the Greens won control of Mid Suffolk district council (which roughly overlaps with the Waveney Valley constituency). He went on:
The counsellors there have spent the last year delivering on their promises to secure investment in the local area, make the council’s operations greener and improve local services. And their efforts are being recognised because the Green-majority council has recently won the council of the year award.
Continue reading...Royal College of Physicians urges government to introduce new law amid rising damp, mould and leaks in social housing
The Royal College of Physicians (RCP) has called on Michael Gove to accelerate a promised crackdown on landlords failing to fix tens of thousands of mouldy homes with a warning that unless laws are toughened many more people will die from the effects.
As the housing ombudsman reported increasing failures among landlords to properly tackle damp, mould and leaks in England’s social housing, Prof Sir Stephen Holgate, special adviser on air quality to the RCP, warned of widening ill-health as more people inhale fungal toxins.
Continue reading...Aysen Dennis, who accused Southwark council of ‘social cleansing’, continues court challenge over Aylesbury estate plans
The bulldozers will soon be out for the south London council flat that was Aysen Dennis’s home for 30 years. After leading a fierce battle against the council and developers, claiming their plans to fill much of her estate with private homes amounted to “social cleansing”, she has finally moved.
Dennis, 65, has been relocated to a swanky new flat in a development bought back by Southwark council. She claims it paid £690,000 for her ninth-floor flat with panoramic views of the park – and is convinced it was an attempt to shut her up before a legal challenge.
Continue reading...Fee income for 20 largest operators – many private equity-owned – soars as councils struggle to meet costs
The biggest private providers of children’s homes in England made profits of more than £300m last year, as concern mounts over the conditions some children are being placed in and the spiralling costs for councils.
Fee income for the 20 largest operators of independent children’s homes totalled £1.63bn last year, a 6.5% increase on the previous year. And 19% of that – £310m – was recorded as profit, according to an independent analysis. Half of the top 20 providers have some private equity or sovereign wealth fund ownership.
Continue reading...Daniel Andrews also announces redevelopment of 44 public housing towers and more renter protections
Australia’s first widespread levy on short-stay accommodation and the redevelopment of 44 monolithic public housing towers have been announced by the Victorian government as part of an overhaul of policy.
The 7.5% levy on platforms such as Airbnb and Stayz, announced by the premier, Daniel Andrews, on Wednesday, is expected to raise about $70m annually to fund social and affordable housing.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Metrics reflect gross addition to supply, even as unit blocks in affluent Sydney suburbs are being replaced by luxury single properties
Luxury homes built on the site of former unit blocks in Sydney are counting towards council targets for new dwellings, even where they have reduced the available housing stock by displacing multiple properties.
A swathe of interwar apartment buildings in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and inner city face the wrecking ball, to be replaced with modern residences, as Guardian Australia revealed on Wednesday.
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