Developers have forced a council to drop its affordable housing targets after an appeal judge described the area’s properties are ‘cheap as chips’. Blythe Council wanted to keep its policy of 30 per cent affordable housing in a new residential development. But Persimmon Homes, Barratt Homes and Millhouse Developments challenged the council. The court of appeal ruled in favour of the developers on the grounds that the area already had some of the lowest cost housing in the country.
Caroline Flint has opened the door for direct investment in council homes, indicating that ‘good councils’ would qualify for social housing grants to build new homes. A spokesperson for Ms Flint said she expected councils to start applying for the grants by 2009, when they could use their assets and borrow in a similar way to arms length management organisations.
The Audit Commission is launching a consultation on rolling out short notice inspections to all housing associations, after a successful pilot programme with 12 associations. The inspections will take less time to complete than the conventional inspections and will focus on the quality of services provided to tenants and leaseholders.
The Nationwide figures released yesterday showing an 8.1 per cent annual decline in house prices in July, and a 1.7 per cent drop for the month. The survey found that house prices have fallen for the ninth month in a row and are now at their lowest level since August 2006. The average price of a home in the UK fell by 9 per cent (or around £17,000) since their peak in October 2007. Economists at Nationwide do not believe the market will recover quickly.
The housing market slump will wipe £50,000 from the value of the average British home and threaten to push 1.7 million people, or one in six, into negative equity. Standard & Poor’s (S&P) the credit ratings agency, predicts that house prices will fall by a rate of 17 per cent by next April. S&P have estimated that the average borrower has a loan worth 54 per cent of their property’s value, but around 70,000 households, or 0.6 per cent of all borrowers, are already in negative equity. For every further percentage point decline in house prices, between 60,000 and 180,000 homeowners could fall into negative equity.
The government has unveiled a £5 million fund to help flood-risk households. A consultation on how best the money can be spent was published yesterday by the department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and looked at the possibility of providing a free home flood survey, and offering a grant to cover some of the costs of preventative measures such as air brick covers, waterproof walls and floors and raised electrics. Research suggests that where measures are in place to prevent flooding, they cut the financial costs of the flooding by 50 to 80 per cent.
Meanwhile, the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) has called on the government to make a long-term improvement to the energy efficiency of the country’s existing housing stock to tackle growing fuel bills. A spokesperson for CIH said that making homes more energy efficient will both reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 60 per cent and also protect the most vulnerable households who are already struggling with their bills.
The eco-town challenge panel, the independent group set up by Caroline Flint to encourage bidders for the eco-towns to raise the standard of their proposals, has said that ‘significant progress’ has been made in the proposals. However it still wants to see further improvements in transport and employment strategies. The panel is not responsible for deciding which bids are taken forward.