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Morning Briefing: damning Universal Credit study appears 17 months late
Ministers appear to have sat on research revealing “real financial problems” of Universal Credit claimants for nearly a year and a half, and other housing news
In the news
The Guardian reports that a joint study by the Department for Work and Pensions and HMRC found that 60% of those who said they struggled to pay bills said difficulties began when they moved on to Universal Credit.
Released yesterday morning, the report is actually dated November 2017, when then work and pensions secretary David Gauke was deciding whether to pause the roll-out of the new system.
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Meanwhile, council planning departments are becoming more permissive when it comes to new housing.
Property Wire reports that there has been a steady increase over the past eight years in the number of home planning applications granted as a percentage of all applications, since the introduction of ‘presumption towards approval’ by the National Planning Policy Framework.
Indeed, despite the omnipresence of Brexit, politicians are still interested in housing, with The House, parliament’s in-house magazine, carrying two pieces on the subject.
In an interview with the publication, Labour’s shadow housing secretary John Healey vows to solve the housing crisis, including a new definition of affordable housing linked to incomes, not the market.
British businessman Lord Simon Wolfson, chief executive of Next, has a different vision, advocating a new generation of garden cities.
Elsewhere, Tes, formerly the Times Educational Supplement, has a story on the Department for Education (DfE) which, the magazine says, wants to help 20 schools sell off land for housing.
According to the article, the DfE’s property company, LocatEd, has identified 100 schools with estates in poor condition and land they do not require. They are also in areas with “a pressing need for new housing”.
In local news, the North Yorkshire town of Ripon is set to see new council housing with built-in “escape paths” to help people flee in case of a sinkhole opening up.
The BBC has the story on the sinkhole-prone town, where a six metre-deep hole appeared in 2016.
On social media
We’ve published the UK Housing Review 2019 today. A couple of choice charts and graphs from it coming up shortly t.co/58AR3l5J3j pic.twitter.com/uataW0xwfA
— David Pipe CIHCM (@DavidPipeCIH)We've published the UK Housing Review 2019 today. A couple of choice charts and graphs from it coming up shortly https://t.co/58AR3l5J3j pic.twitter.com/uataW0xwfA
— David Pipe CIHCM (@DavidPipeCIH) April 4, 2019
