Morning Briefing: man jailed for Grenfell fraud
A man is jailed for Grenfell fraud, an MP hits out at house builder bonuses, and all your other major housing housing news today
A number of national papers run the story of Daniel Steventon, who was jailed after claiming money fraudulently while saying he was a Grenfell survivor.
Mr Steventon claimed that he lived with one of the victims of Grenfell in order to claim £75,000 in hotel costs, food allowances and bank payments, and has now been jailed for three-and-a-half years, the BBC reports.
Mr Steventon had previously pleaded guilty to one count of fraud by false representation.
The Independent reports on new figures revealing that chief executives from Britain’s 10 biggest house builders raked in a collective total of £63.6m last year, earning a median sum of £2.1m.
According to the article, the 10 firms completed and sold 86,685 homes last year, but hold planning permission for 470,068 other plots of land on which homes have not been built.
Labour MP Siobhan McDonagh, who cited the figures during a debate in parliament yesterday, said the figures show that “the British housebuilding industry is broken”.
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Plans for a row of seven tower blocks in Bristol, to be developed by A2Dominion, have been rejected for showing a “total lack of respect for the community”.
According to the BBC, A2Dominion worked with Bristol Council and the University of Bristol to develop the blocks, the tallest of which contained 550 student flats and 40 affordable homes.
More than 100 people objected to the plans, with one describing the row of blocks as being like “Trump’s wall being erected”.
Camden Council has admitted it is struggling to cope with the number of calls from housing tenants needing repairs, the Camden New Journal reports.
The council said its contact centre received around 650 calls per day this summer and said less than half were answered during the target time of two minutes.
The performance of its repair system will be discussed at a council meeting next week.
CityMetric runs an opinion piece by Sam Watling that criticises the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) for lying about its support for affordable housing.
Mr Watling said that despite claiming to support the aims of charities such as Shelter, the CPRE’s ethos is to “keep people away from where its wealthy supporters in the countryside live”.
Scottish housing minister Kevin Stewart admitted that a Scottish National Party (SNP) manifesto commitment to give councils more powers to force sales of empty buildings would not be met in this parliament, Scottish Housing News writes.
The SNP had previously pledged to introduce compulsory sale orders to help councils deal with empty properties and regenerate derelict land.
Also in Scotland, the BBC has written a piece about the final residents living in a derelict housing estate in Livingston.
The council houses were condemned 15 years ago and now only nine of the 240 houses on the estate are occupied.
The remaining residents claim that the council has not offered them enough money to leave.
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