Caps, cuts and moving home
Posted: November 8, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Private renting 2 CommentsDonald Rumsfeld would call it an unknown unknown: how many people will be forced to move miles away from home as a result of the government’s housing and welfare reforms?
As a new law allowing local authorities to discharge their duty to homeless people into the private rented sector comes into force from this Friday (November 9) and the countdown continues to sweeping cuts in benefit from April 2013, it’s a question that will be asked over and over again.
Where’s the evidence on section 106?
Posted: November 7, 2012 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Planning Leave a commentThe government’s plans on section 106 and affordable housing came under fire from all sides of both houses of parliament this week – and no wonder.
In the Commons, communities secretary Eric Pickles said the Growth and Infrastructure Bill would cut red tape by allowing the renegotiation of ‘economically unrealistic’ section 106 agreements. ‘In our sights particularly are affordable housing requirements that were negotiated at the height of Labour’s unsustainable housing boom. Now that the Brown bubble has burst, bringing us back to reality with a bump, we recognise that 75,000 homes, with planning permission, are lying unbuilt.’
Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing
April is the cruellest month
Posted: November 5, 2012 Filed under: Homelessness, Housing benefit, Welfare reform | Tags: council tax benefit, welfare changes Leave a commentEvery time you think you have got your head around the impact of the April 2013 welfare changes you realise you have forgotten something that makes it even worse.
I don’t need reminding that there are now just 147 days until the bedroom tax and overall benefit cap take affect. I know that increases in the local housing allowance will be restricted to CPI inflation from the same date. I realise that a range of other cuts in benefits and the localisation of council tax benefit and the social fund with reduced funding come in at the same time.
Supply and demand
Posted: November 1, 2012 Filed under: Affordable housing, Housebuilding, Housing benefit, Private renting Leave a commentThere is good news, bad news and really bad news in figures out today on housing supply in England.
The good news first: net additional housing supply rose 11 per cent in 2011/12 to 134,900 in 2011. That follows three consecutive annual falls in the wake of the credit crunch and represents a return to the level seen in the early 2000s. Net additional supply is the government’s preferred measure since it includes not just new build homes but gains and losses from demolitions and conversions of buildings from one use to another too.
Net additional housing supply in England (source: DCLG)
Jules Birch 