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Short on time? Wednesday’s housing news in five minutes

A round-up of the top stories this morning from Inside Housing and elsewhere

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Short on time? Wednesday’s housing news in five minutes #ukhousing

Election 2019: sector bodies and housing charities unveil pleas to incoming government

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With polling day less than a month away, industry groups and charities have unveiled their election pleas. More social housing, clarity on building safety and an end to homelessness are among the areas of lobbying.

The National Housing Federation and the Chartered Institute of Housing are agreed on wanting at least 90,000 homes a year built for social rent. Among the G15’s calls are a need for clarity on building safety guidance, and it claims that current advice from government is confusing.

Shelter has teamed up with five other charities in a bid to ‘End Homelessness Now’.

Regulatory judgements: London council becomes latest authority to breach Home Standard

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Lambeth Council has become the latest local authority to breach the Home Standard after issues relating to fire safety, gas safety and asbestos management were discovered.

The council, which owns around 22,500 homes, was found by the regulator to have “a significant number of overdue remedial actions arising from fire risk assessments”, (FRAs) including some for FRAs considered intolerable or substantial.

Lunchtime long read

Lunchtime long read

Have Facebook groups replaced tenants’ associations as the primary way for residents to voice their frustrations?

In an in-depth feature, Inside Housing has spoken to parties on both sides of the divide to find out whether this new way of ramping up pressure on landlords means the relationship has to be adversarial.

Click here for the full story

Quote of the day

Quote of the day

“By investing in social housing, the next government could save billions in the long term by bringing down the benefit bill and spending less on temporary accommodation and homelessness services.”

Kate Henderson, chief executive, National Housing Federation

The boss of the National Housing Federation, which represents the country’s housing associations, lays out what the organisation wants to see from the new government to fix the current housing crisis.

Read the full comment piece here

In the papers

In the papers

Picture: Getty

Owners of homes damaged by floods will get up to £10,000 to help to protect their properties from future deluges under a proposed government-backed scheme, The Times reports.

Residents will also be able to bag lower insurance premiums if they invest in techniques such as recoating walls with waterproof plaster, moving sockets halfway up walls, installing non-return valves on lavatories and replacing floorboards with stone tiles, the paper says.

In the same paper, an obituary of the the well-liked former Labour health secretary Frank Dobson recalls how as a councillor at Camden Council in the early 1970s he reacted to a shortage of council housing in the borough by municipalising hundreds of private properties. Two years later he was elected as council leader.

Local news

Local news

Picture: Getty

In David Cameron’s old constituency of Witney, the district council is looking into how to bring long-term empty homes back into use to solve the housing crisis. A council report says there are currently 418 properties classed as long-term empty in West Oxfordshire, as of August this year, the Oxford Mail reports.

And a developer that built affordable homes in a Derbyshire village deemed too small for families is selling a house to the council for £1.

Derby-based Monument Two built 39 homes on the former Calder Aluminium site in Repton Road, four of which were for affordable housing, the Derby Telegraph reports. However all the area’s 11 housing associations rejected the homes because they were too small, the paper claims.

South Derbyshire District Council said that the house it has acquired will be used to house homeless people.

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