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Morning Briefing: extra council borrowing is 'not enough'

Council leaders have hit out against Theresa May’s attempts to kickstart a new generation of council housing. 

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Picture: Getty
Picture: Getty
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Morning Briefing: council leaders hit out at PM over pledge for housing money

In the news

In The Observer, council leaders have warned that the £1bn of borrowing headroom made available to a limited number of councils will not be enough.

Lord Porter, chair of the Local Government Association, said the change on the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap would not allow him to meet local demand in his local area in Lincolnshire.

The government is also under fire from whistleblowers, who have told The Guardian that the IT system used for Universal Credit is “broken”.

According to them, some claimants have seen payments delayed for weeks or wrongly reduced by hundreds of pounds because of glitches and errors.

The same newspaper carries a piece by its money editor, Patrick Collinson, who notes that one bank has returned to offering mortgages of 5.5 times the buyer’s income with only a 5% deposit from the buyer.

He asks whether we’re seeing a return to the reckless lending that caused the 2008 financial crisis.

Meanwhile, The Independent reveals that more than 100 council homes in Kensington and Chelsea are lying empty, even while Grenfell survivors have yet to be rehoused.

The council’s audit and transparency committee has ruled that one councillor should apologise to a Grenfell survivor after shouting about sprinklers at a meeting over budgets. Get West London has the story.

And The Mirror’s associate editor, Kevin Maguire, has written an opinion piece calling attempts to shift blame onto the firefighters at Grenfell Tower “grotesque”.

Outside London, fire safety work goes on, and the Huff Post reports that Birmingham City Council has written to the government demanding £31m to cover the costs of fitting sprinklers.

Elsewhere, The Independent reports warnings from MPs that EU citizens could face the same problems accessing housing as the Windrush generation under the government’s Brexit plans.

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What’s on

In parliament, housing secretary James Brokenshire will face oral questions from the house from 2.30pm.

The Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee will be in session later on, hearing evidence from representatives of local government about the potential impact of Brexit.

Three firefighters are also scheduled to give evidence today as the Grenfell Tower Inquiry continues.

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