Wednesday, 16 May 2012

Inside Housing
13/11/2009

View all stories from this issue.

  • £500bn: cost of green homes

    13/11/2009

    It will cost half a trillion pounds to reduce carbon emissions from all existing homes by 60 per cent, the head of the government’s housing agency has said.

  • A right to buy

    13/11/2009

    Smart landlords are involving residents in procurement decisions

  • Aldwyck halts restructure after race ruling

    19/11/2009

    Aldwyck Housing Association has temporarily halted consultation on plans to restructure its housing support services department, after an employment tribunal found it guilty of race discrimination.

  • Associations could float on stock market to raise cash

    13/11/2009

    A group of lawyers, bankers and chief executives will investigate whether housing associations could float on the stock market to raise funds.

  • Barratt strengthened by £720m rights issue

    17/11/2009

    House builder Barratt has raised £720 million and says it is in a strong position to buy land and open new sites.

  • Birmingham loses eviction appeal

    13/11/2009

    Birmingham Council has lost an appeal to evict tenants housed as part of a ‘cash for homes’ scandal.

  • Brown: prioritise homes for local people

    13/11/2009

    Gordon Brown has stressed local authorities should prioritise social housing for local people, in a major speech on immigration.

  • Cohesion is a strong point

    13/11/2009

    Your article, ‘Cohesion failing in Pathfinders, says government’ (www.insidehousing.co.uk, 28 October), did not offer an pathfinder perspective on the recently published CLG report Housing market renewal and community cohesion.

  • Commission sets out NIHE’s options

    13/11/2009

    The largest housing association in the UK could be formed under proposals to overhaul the provision of social housing in Northern Ireland.

  • Council offers rent cuts as transfer incentive

    13/11/2009

    Dacorum Council has pledged that some of its tenants will see their rents fall if it is successful in transferring its 11,000 homes to a housing association.

  • Earmarked budget a policy winner

    13/11/2009

    The Communities and Local Government department’s recent select committee report on the Supporting People programme misses a golden opportunity to bury the argument over the retention of the ring fence on funding without selling support providers short.

  • Failed asylum seekers left without support if they make a new claim

    13/11/2009

    Stranded foreign nationals face destitution and homelessness because of rule changes which demand they go to Liverpool if they want to make a new application for asylum.

  • Five children a day face eviction in Scotland

    13/11/2009

    Five children a day face being thrown out of their social home in Scotland, according to a report by Shelter Scotland.

  • Giant Chelsea garden to highlight homelessness

    18/11/2009

    Homelessness charities are joining forces with government agencies and the Eden Project to create a garden at next year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

  • Gone but not forgotten

    13/11/2009

    Landlords can bring ASBIs against former tenants, says Deborah Powell

  • HCA chief refuses £44,000 bonus

    13/11/2009

    The chief executive of the Homes and Communities Agency turned down a £44,000 bonus this year.

  • Hidden danger

    13/11/2009

    A year ago the Health and Safety Executive warned that 1,200 homes with concealed flue boiler systems could be ‘immediately dangerous’. Martin Hilditch charts the action taken by developers since then to deal with this unseen threat

  • Housing leaders back regulatory change

    16/11/2009

    Social landlords have welcomed the publication of the Tenant Services Authority’s draft standards for regulation, but argue there is still work to do.

  • Housing officers should tackle overcrowding

    19/11/2009

    Social landlords should look at using housing officers as ‘foot soldiers’ to tackle overcrowding on their patches, according to a new report.

  • Inspections report mixed results

    11/01/2010

    Birmingham-based housing association Midland Heart has ‘a mixture of strengths and weaknesses’, according to inspectors.

  • ISH•SUM page

    17/11/2009

  • Jobs zone - north east England

    13/11/2009

    The north east needs designers, developers, housing graduates and more, says Mark Flannery

  • Lambeth sells 10 homes for £1.68m

    13/11/2009

    Lambeth Council attempted to sell more of its social housing stock than any other local authority last month, as it claws back an overspend on last year’s annual budget.

  • Leaseholders dispute fire safety charges

    17/11/2009

    Leaseholders from a Southwark tower block have made a bid to challenge bills for work being done on their building.

  • Lib Dems attack housing allowance cut

    18/11/2009

    The Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has joined the attack on the government’s plans to cut excess housing benefit payments.

  • Local solutions

    13/11/2009

    Smarter thinking, not more government directives, would be the best response to the Pilkington family case

  • Mother forced to wash disabled children in garden

    18/11/2009

    A mother was forced to hose down her severely disabled children in the garden after a council failed to provide her with suitable accommodation.

  • Move scheme put on hold

    13/11/2009

    Plans to pilot a national mobility scheme to help tenants move around England have been shelved because of a lack of interest from housing associations.

  • Movers & shakers

    13/11/2009

    Gemma Edghill has joined Stafford & Rural Homes as service excellence manager. She joins from Stockport Homes where she was performance and value for money manager.

  • Opening doors

    13/11/2009

    Tenants deserve the social advantages that come with being able to move house

  • Partner sought for £750m Purfleet project

    13/11/2009

    Thurrock Thames Gateway Development Corporation is inviting private developers to bid for a £750 million joint venture that would see 3,500 homes built as part of a scheme to improve Purfleet town centre.

  • Pathfinders' 'success' is relative

    13/11/2009

    You report the CLG’s claim that pathfinders are a success because prices rose 70 per cent between 2002 and 2007 (Inside Housing, 30 October).

  • Persimmon reports 50 per cent rise in orders

    16/11/2009

    Persimmon’s order book for 2010 is 50 per cent ahead of this time last year after the house builder enjoyed a recovery in sales volumes.

  • Play by the rules

    13/11/2009

    Clear, concise and not harbouring any nasty surprises. The proposed rule book unveiled yesterday by the Tenant Services Authority is good news for the majority of social landlords and, of course, their tenants.

  • Policy tensions hinder build goals

    17/11/2009

    A leading research charity has said the government is unlikely to meet its target to build three million new homes by 2020.

  • Pre-Christmas rush sees house prices fall

    16/11/2009

    Asking prices fell 1.6 per cent between October and November as sellers tried to shift houses before Christmas.

  • Private rented sector needs regulation

    19/11/2009

    The private rented sector needs to be regulated to attract money from institutional investors such as pension funds, a conference has heard.

  • Quick exit

    13/11/2009

    Decanting residents from their homes normally takes months to plan. But when a 1960s tower block was found to be a fire risk in July this year, Calderdale Council got them out within days. Mark Thompson, head of housing and the environment at the council, explains how

  • Recovery 'threatened' by refusal to extend stamp duty holiday

    20/11/2009

    The government is putting housing market recovery at risk by refusing to extend the stamp duty holiday, investors have warned.

  • Regulator criticised for use of 'snap polls'

    18/11/2009

    The Tenant Services Authority could be relying too much on ‘snap polls’ for information, it was suggested at a conference yesterday.

  • Repossession scheme praised

    17/11/2009

    Legal aid minister Willy Bach has praised a scheme offering advice to people facing repossession, on a visit to Hull.

  • Review ordered after fire spreads through roof

    17/11/2009

    A housing association has called in chartered surveyors to look at homes on an estate after a fire spread rapidly through roof space.

  • Rok shifts its focus to social sector

    13/11/2009

    Construction and maintenance firm Rok has revealed it intends to concentrate on social housing and maintenance projects as a result of decreased demand for private sector schemes.

  • Ruling could land public with £53bn debt

    13/11/2009

    Housing associations could see their £53.1 billion debt added to the public balance sheet, after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal against a ruling that the organisations are public bodies for some purposes.

  • Security bypass

    13/11/2009

    Great Places has completed a merger without having to guarantee £10 million in pensions debt. Here’s how

  • Slow progress

    13/11/2009

    Dealing with the Health and Safety Executive can, at times, feel like sitting in a sloth-drawn carriage in the middle of a traffic jam.

  • Social landlords asked to tackle unemployment

    16/11/2009

    Communities secretary John Denham has called on social landlords to fight worklessness among their tenants.

  • Social tenants doubt benefits of eco-measures

    20/11/2009

    People who seriously doubt the benefits of green community infrastructure are likely to be social renters, research by the UK Green Building Council has revealed.

  • Struggling landlords get rent cut loophole

    17/11/2009

    The social housing regulator has set out the steps housing associations must take to avoid the 0.9 per cent reduction in the guideline limit for rents.

  • Support for elderly at heart of pre-election programme

    18/11/2009

    Support for elderly people in their own homes will feature strongly in the legislative programme before the general election, alongside bills to counter anti-social behaviour, and child poverty.

  • Surveyors call for stamp duty shake up

    17/11/2009

    The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has called for a restructure of stamp duty as the holiday on the tax comes to an end.

  • Thames Valley wins development case

    13/11/2009

    A firm of solicitors has paid £1.35 million to a bank after it failed to carry out part of its conveyancing procedures when a housing association bought land.

  • The short goodbye

    13/11/2009

    Last week John Belcher, the highest paid housing association chief executive, left his high-profile role at Anchor Trust. Chloë Stothart investigates what prompted his sudden departure

  • The view from here

    13/11/2009

    Arm's-length management organisations wouldn't exist without decent homes. So what contribution have they made? In the second part of our series on the landmark programme, Lydia Stockdale discovers two sides to the story

  • Third of eco-town homes should be affordable

    16/11/2009

    At least 30 per cent of the housing in eco-towns must be affordable if the developments are to be a success.

  • Two charged in Ujima fraud investigation

    13/11/2009

    Fraud detectives have charged a housewife and a consultant with money laundering following a 17-month investigation into suspected fraud at Ujima Housing Association.

  • Ujima fraud suspects in court

    19/11/2009

    Two suspects accused of money laundering following a suspected fraud at Ujima Housing Association have appeared in court.

  • Union calls for council-led building

    18/11/2009

    Councils should be given a duty to provide homes alongside a greater role in house building, according to a study for Unison.

  • Video: UK Housing Awards

    16/11/2009

    All the winners and highlights from the UK Housing Awards, which were presented at a ceremony in London last week

  • Welsh instigate housing finance review

    18/11/2009

    The Welsh Assembly Government is looking to change the way social housing is funded and rents are set in the country.