The government is on inflation alert amid fears that dearer petrol and food will herald the start of a year of bad news on the cost of living and limit the Bank of England’s ability to cut interest rates. With the latest official inflation data due out this morning, the City is braced for an
TENANTS IN SOUTH KESTEVEN have rejected stock transfer by a vote of almost 3-1. On a 76% turnout, 73% of the Lincolnshire authority’s tenants opted to stay with the council against 27% in favour of transfer. However, tenants in Watford voted narrowly (54.5%) in favour of transfer to Watford Community Housing Trust to become only
Nearly three-quarters of landlords are bracing themselves for an increase in the number of tenants falling behind in their rent according to the National Landlords’ Association (NLA). Most landlords thought that rent arrears will increase next year as the economic situation worsens and unemployment rises, and just over a third said they were already experiencing
Housing minister Margaret Beckett announced a £605 million allocation to 163 local authorities with long-term plans to increase house building to meet the needs of their communities. During the next two years the money will enable LAs with plans for growth to invest in the essential services that need to accompany the building of new
Park and mobile home residents will receive better protection from site owners and easier access to justice if they have a dispute under new proposals unveiled by housing minister Iain Wright. The proposals aim to ensure all reputable sites and owners are licensed and can be challenged on issues such as excessive pitch fees without
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has released a report today showing that house prices fell last month for the first time in nearly two years. Demand is also falling, with the number of new buyer inquiries declining for the ninth consecutive month and at the fastest pace since August 2004. The largest falls
Gordon Brown will back a major new programme of rented housing and hint that councils should be allowed to build homes again in a speech today to the annual conference of the general union GMB, reports The Guardian. English Partnerships has invited expressions of interest in what will be England’s first large-scale zero carbon development.
In related figures, the Ministry of Justice saw a big drop in the number of lenders getting court permissions for the early stages of repossession. There were 17,054 repossession orders granted in the courts in the first three month of the year, which was 39 per cent lower than in the same period a year
The vast majority of tenants get on well with their landlord according to research by the Deposit Protection Scheme (DPS). Eighty-four per cent of tenants said they get on well with their landlord and nearly a quarter of those described their relationship with them as fantastic. Only 16 per cent of respondents said they did
An entire village has been put up for sale. Linkenholt in Hampshire comes with 22 cottages and houses, a village shop, cricket club, blacksmiths, farmland and woodland, and is for sale for up to £25 million. It is being sold by a local charitable trust which will reinvest the proceeds locally, and the trust has