Morning Briefing: Cardiff councillor suspended for homelessness comments

In the news

The i reports that Kathryn Kelloway, a councillor for the affluent Cyncoed ward in Cardiff, called on the council to tear down the tents to give the city “a better image”.

On Friday evening, the Cardiff Conservative Group announced that Ms Kelloway had been suspended from the party.

Although these tents are allowed to stand, homeless people in the UK are often arrested under the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which makes it an offence to sleep rough.

Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has secured a debate on Tuesday on her private members bill which will call on the government to repeal this act, the Oxford Times reports.

Meanwhile, the Financial Times has a story on calls from a range of groups for the government to reconsider UK planning rules that allow homes to be built without council consent.

It says organisations from the Royal Institute of British Architects to the Local Government Association have urged the housing minister to reconsider the rules on ‘office-to-resi’ permitted development, which allows builders to convert commercial buildings into housing without planning permission.

The FT also runs a comment piece from the Information Commissioner which says housing associations should be covered by Freedom of Information laws following Grenfell.

This is a call the information watchdog first made around two months after the fire but reiterating the statement in a national newspaper suggests she is keen on pushing the issue.

She wrote: “Our infrastructure is built by private contractors with public money. Our leisure centres and prisons are often run by private companies.

“Social housing services are delivered by housing associations, and charities run safeguarding services for children. Except in some complicated scenarios, none of these organisations is subject to scrutiny under information laws. So none is accountable to the public.”

The government has previously stopped short of extending FOI to housing associations, but it has called on them to publish risk assessments of high rise buildings.

The same newspaper has a letter from a reader concerned about the exclusion of house prices from measures of inflation.

He argues that the Consumer Price Index and the Retail Price Index should be adjusted to take into account inflated house prices.

Elsewhere, The Guardian reports that Lloyds Bank is offering 100% mortgages to first-time buyers, but only if they have parents who can guarantee the loan.

Under the scheme, a first-time-buyer can borrow up to £500,000 without a deposit if a family member puts a sum equal to the value of 10% of the property into a Lloyds savings account.

And the HuffPost carries a report on the latest official figures for Grenfell-style cladding removal, which show that just 15% of buildings clad in dangerous aluminium composite material have completed remediation.

On social media

The G15 chair welcomes the publication of the aforementioned open letter:

Good to see ⁦@FT⁩ reporting on open letter I and other housing leaders wrote to ⁦@JBrokenshire⁩ calling on government to scrap plans to extend #PermittedDevelopment rights to shops because of risk to quality and loss of #AffordableHousing t.co/wTjPVklfss

— Paul Hackett (@PaulHackett10)

Good to see ⁦@FT⁩ reporting on open letter I and other housing leaders wrote to ⁦@JBrokenshire⁩ calling on government to scrap plans to extend #PermittedDevelopment rights to shops because of risk to quality and loss of #AffordableHousing https://t.co/wTjPVklfss

— Paul Hackett (@PaulHackett10) January 28, 2019

And criticism of model Chidera’s, The Slumflower, take on living alone:

there’s a...housing crisis t.co/8IpM8G06mK

— kieran (@kieran_yates)

there’s a...housing crisis https://t.co/8IpM8G06mK

— kieran (@kieran_yates) January 27, 2019

What’s on

• Housing secretary James Brokenshire will face questions in parliament today from 2.30pm in the main chamber
• Later on the housing select committee will take evidence on the progress of implementing post-Grenfell changes to building regulations. Housing minister Kit Malthouse, former chair of the building regulations review Dame Judith Hackitt and Bob Ledsome, head of the technical policy division at the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government, will be giving evidence