WELCOME TO ROOF’s first lunchtime news, a new service that aims to cut through the information overload and bring you a quick selection of the most significant news about housing and homelessness on the web and in the media. You can check back at lunchtime every weekday to catch up with what’s happening, subscribe to our email alert service or let us know what else you want to see by commenting on this article.

• Luxury flats in Knightsbridge are selling for £4,200 per square foot, according to The Times. Four penthouse flats have sold for £84m.
• The government announced a new competition to encourage developers to build low and zero carbon homes [more on this below].
• A government scheme offering grants to make homes more energy efficient ran out of money after just ten hours, according to the Guardian.
• The government is under fire from the National Housing Federation and Campaign to Protect Rural England for dragging its feet on implementing the recommendations of its Affordable Rural Housing Commission.
• Lynsey Hanley, author of Estates, makes a passionate plea in Society Guardian for an end to the policy bias against social housing tenants.
• Housing minister Yvette Cooper gave a breakdown of additional homes produced by local authorities and housing associations in a written answer yesterday. Output is still half what it was ten years ago.
• and finally…this month’s jobsworth award goes to planning officers in Somerset. Burnham-on-Sea resident Sylvia Sparkes thought she was doing a simple good deed when she told Colin Johnstone, a homeless Big Issue seller, he could sleep in a caravan she wasn’t using. Not according to Sedgemoor District Council: ‘Government planning regulations require planning permission for any caravan used as an independent unit for accommodation,’ it said. More here.