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Morning Briefing: housing minister will send ‘planning A-team’ to help councils build

Housing minister prepares new “planning A-team” to help councils, cities with the highest rent increases are revealed, and all of your other major housing stories of the day

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Picture: Chris McAndrew
Picture: Chris McAndrew
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Morning Briefing: housing minister to send planning ‘A-team’ to help councils to build #ukhousing

Esther McVey lines up new “planning A-team” to help councils, the biggest UK rent increases revealed, and all of your other major housing stories of the day in today’s @insidehousing Morning Briefing

Esther McVey, the housing minister, will unveil plans to send a crack team of planning specialists across the country to help councils struggling to get regeneration and housing schemes approved, The Times has written today.

According to the paper, Ms McVey will announce later today that a team of specialist planners, designers and ecologists will be sent to councils to assist with fast-tracking the planning approvals for regeneration schemes.

In a tip of the hat to the well-known TV programme starring Mr.T, Ms McVey will say: “It doesn’t matter if it’s boosting capacity or plugging gaps in labour and expertise, if you have a problem… you can hire the planning A-team.”

It comes amid fears that a lack of skills in local authority planning teams is delaying schemes and threatening their attempts to meet the pledge of building 300,000 homes a year.

Ms McVey also speaks to The Evening Standard about the department’s planning reforms, setting out plans that could see developers refunded by councils if they take too long to push through planning applications.

She told the London paper that refunds for planning fees would ensure council planning departments were held to account and encourage house builders to commit to projects even if they find a council tough to work with.

The Guardian has am article on welfare reform this morning, with an exclusive that reveals one in three councils are using computer algorithms to help with decisions on welfare issues and benefit claims.


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Companies including US-based Experian and outsourcers Capita and Palantir, are selling machine-learning packages to local authorities.
The investigation by The Guardian found that 140 of 408 councils in England have invested in software contracts worth millions of pounds with these companies.
Responding to the findings, the Local Government Association said that good use of data could be hugely beneficial for councils, but it was important that data is only ever used to inform and not make decisions.
The BBC has carried out analysis of rents across the country, identifying Nottingham, Leeds and Bristol as the areas with the highest price rises in the third quarter of the year.
The data taken from property website Zoopla, reveals rents in Nottingham have risen by 5.4% on average in the third quarter of the year compared with the same period last year, while Leeds and Bristol have both seen an increase of 4.5%.
On the other end of the table, Aberdeen showed the biggest fall in rent rates, with the average rent across the city down 4.1% in the third quarter of the year.

The data also showed the average rent households in different parts of the country paid, with London far ahead with the average monthly rent set at more than £1,600.

Housing association Vivid has apologised to one of its Basingstoke residents after he was threatened by squatters who moved into an empty flat above his home, Hampshire-based paper The Gazette reports.

According to the father, his family feared for its safety after the flat close to them had been taken over and was beset with anti-social behaviour.

In response, Derek Street, Vivid’s head of neighbourhoods, has apologised to the man and other residents at the St Kilda House development in Basingstoke and promised to secure the property and prevent any further intrusion.

 

On social

Sector reacts to the hosuing minsiter’s “planning A-team” plan

New government statistics for first-time buyers are out, and the number is on the rise

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