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Morning Briefing: MHCLG staff member stabbed outside Westminster office
A civil servant was stabbed outside the Marsham Street building, George Clarke lets fly on the former housing secretary, and all your other major housing news stories
A number of papers have reported on the stabbing of a Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) staff member just metres outside of the department’s office in Westminster.
According to reports, armed police, including specialist firearm officers, arrived at Marsham Street, the building that MHCLG shares with the Home Office, at 1pm to arrest the man after he attacked the civil servant.
The victim, who is described as a man in his sixties, was found to have knife injuries that were believed to be neither life threatening nor life changing by the police.
The Sun also runs a video that appears to show a suspect being arrested and items left at the scene including a rucksack and a box containing a ferret.
Robert Jenrick, the new housing secretary, described the incident as “horrific” and said as a result of the attack the department would be reviewing security across the MHCLG estate.
The Guardian runs a piece on a ridiculous situation where a Home Office contractor smashed a door to allow an asylum seeker into her property just hours after she was locked out.
The Home Office U-turn came after the paper alerted it to the fact that the locks on the asylum seeker’s door had been changed.
The asylum seeker is a Gambian national who fled the country after refusing to carry out female genital mutilation on youngsters and currently has an active asylum claim.
TV Architect George Clarke has not held back with his views on the housing ministerial merry-go-round in an explosive interview with The Big Issue.
Mr Clarke, who is best known for the Channel 4 show George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, called the level of churn that has seen nine housing ministers in nine years a “joke” and “shameful”.
He also didn’t hold back on his views of the recently replaced housing secretary James Brokenshire, who was described as a “waste of time” and “over media trained”.
The comments came just weeks after the architect’s Channel 4 programme George Clarke’s Council House Scandal, where he charted the 100-year history of council housebuilding and called for the increase in the number of homes councils build in the future.
You can read Inside Housing’s interview with Mr Clarke about the show here.
In local news, LocalGov runs a piece on Crest Nicholson pulling out a plan to build a new £50m development in Brighton. The website says that the builder decided not to proceed with the scheme as the site was “overly ambitious” in “uncertain times”.
West Midlands local paper the Express & Star has news of the West Midlands Combined Authority securing £41m to help unlock hundreds of acres of former industrial sites in the area. The first housing development on brownfield land will be in Wolverhampton.
Scottish Housing News reports that Cadder Housing Association has been asked by the regulator to update its regulation plan to improve its governance. The regulator said it was engaging with the association after governance weaknesses were identified.
On social media
Offsite construction guru Mark Farmer shares where he thinks the future of housebuilding is heading:
“The investors who have shown interest in modular construction are realising that this is where the future has to lie – moving construction to a factory-based activity.....closely linked to digital technologies via @jtwentyman @Siftedeu @FT #ModerniseorDie t.co/JmxPa0URlE
— Mark Farmer (@MFarmer_Resi)“The investors who have shown interest in modular construction are realising that this is where the future has to lie – moving construction to a factory-based activity.....closely linked to digital technologies via @jtwentyman @Siftedeu @FT #ModerniseorDie https://t.co/JmxPa0URlE
— Mark Farmer (@MFarmer_Resi) August 15, 2019
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