The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says the government is losing momentum in tackling child poverty, with little progress in the past three years and one in three UK children still living in poverty. A treasury select committee said Tony Blair’s 1999 pledge to halve child poverty by 2010 is in doubt. Homes built on flood plains
To mark next week’s national empty homes week, the Empty Homes Agency (EHA) has launched a new website and called on the public to report run-down and empty homes, to help bring them back to use. There are enough vacant homes in England to house almost two million people and the EHA wants to make
The Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) says that landlords need incentives to drive improvements in the private rented sector as thousands of tenants were living in homes that are sub-standard and in need of modernisation. ARLA wants the government to introduce incentives such as tax relief, to encourage landlords to improve their properties, arguing
The government should consider imposing caps on the amount mortgage companies can lend to homebuyers, the deputy governor of the Bank of England has suggested. Sir John Gieve, who is stepping down at the end of the month, said that in theory, a ceiling on loan-to-income and loan-to-value ratios could have provided an effective brake
House prices have recorded their largest monthly fall since 1992, says Nationwide building society. Prices fell 2.5 per cent during May according to its latest monthly survey, bringing the year on year figure down 4.4 per cent. Nationwide said that it was the seventh consecutive month of falling prices, and price falls were now accelerating.
Chancellor Alistair Darling has unveiled plans to convert Northern Rock’s £25 billion Bank of England loan into bonds before selling them to investors. The bonds would be guaranteed by the government until a private buyer is found, in a bid to avoid full public ownership. The scheme is supported by Goldman Sachs, and potential buyers
Housing associations are to stop building mixed estates of privately owned and social rented homes because of the credit crunch, leading to fears of a return to ‘council ghettos’ says The Times. Bob Kerslake, head of Homes and Community Agency (HCA) said that during the past 20 years housing developments had a mix of 30
Commenting in the Evening Standard, Shelter chief executive Adam Sampson warns that homes in London costing less than £100,000 could soon be a thing of the past. An increasingly detached underclass are the real victims of our dysfunctional housing market argues the author Mark Braund in today’s Guardian. Making affordable housing a central part of
An increasing number of wealthier homeowners are seeking debt help as the rise in unemployment and falling property prices puts pressure on household budgets, the Consumer Credit Counselling Service said. Its research shows 12 per cent of clients had a net household income of more than £30,000 last year and nearly half of those seeking
On the tenth anniversary of Labour’s pledge to end child poverty, the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) has urged the government not to abandon the target in the face of global economic issues, arguing it was still possible to achieve the goal of halving child poverty by 2010. In a report the CPAG found that