10 things about 2013: part 2

Posted: December 30, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Buy to let, Help to Buy, Housebuilding, Housing market, Labour market, Planning, Private renting, Wales | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Here’s the second part of my look back at the key themes I’ve been blogging about this year.

6) Help to Buy

If the bedroom tax was the subject I blogged about most in 2013 (see Part 1 of this blog), Help to Buy was certainly the best (or worst) of the rest.

The first hints of the scheme came in January as the coalition published its Mid-Term Review. Perhaps conscious of the gap between rhetoric and reality when it came to the government’s record on housing, David Cameron promised more help for people who cannot raise a deposit for a mortgage, with details to come in the Budget. By March Cameron and Clegg were promising what sounded to me like the coalition’s fourth housing strategy in three years. And in the Budget George Osborne duly announced what I called a huge gamble, loosening the targeting of previous schemes at first-time buyers and new homes and extending the help available much further up the income scale.

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Running on empty

Posted: November 20, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Social housing, Wales | Leave a comment

As the bedroom tax celebrates its debut in the Oxford English Dictionary, there is new evidence today that it is creating empty homes rather than removing ‘spare’ bedrooms.

A survey published by Community Housing Cymru (CHC) today suggests that the first six months of the under-occupation penalty have cost more than 1,000 affordable homes in Wales.

Welsh housing associations say they have 727 homes standing empty as a result the policy. Meanwhile 78 per cent have seen an increase in their rent arrears, with over £1 million attributed to the bedroom tax. Some 51 per cent of tenants are paying the shortfall, 37 per cent are part-paying and 12 per cent are not paying at all.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

First for Wales

Posted: November 18, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Homelessness, Legal, Private renting, Regulation, Wales | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

Legislation introduced today marks a historic moment for housing in Wales but it has wider significance for the rest of the UK too.

It makes history by becoming Wales’s first Housing Bill since it acquired greater devolved powers. The Housing (Wales) Bill aims to ‘ensure that everyone in Wales is able to access a decent home’ (though ministers behind all Housing Bills everywhere say that). The details are what count and the timing and the context are what create the wider significance. As Carl Sargeant, the Welsh minister for housing and regeneration, puts it: ‘Despite the impact of austerity measures and budget decisions taken by the UK Government, the Welsh Government is determined to improve the supply, quality and standards of housing and the proposals in this Housing Bill are crucial in achieving this.’

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

The bedroom tax: only fair to private tenants?

Posted: October 17, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Bedroom tax, Housing benefit, Northern Ireland, Private renting, Social housing, Wales | 10 Comments

Of all the arguments made for the bedroom tax, the most slippery is the one about it being ‘only fair to private tenants’. That should change after an all-party report published this week.

It’s the third and probably least used of three arguments made by ministers for what they call the removal of the spare room subsidy but it’s also the one that has received the least scrutiny.

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Renting reform

Posted: May 23, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Civil service, Legal, Private renting, Social housing, Wales | Leave a comment

Wales is set to go where England failed to tread on tenancy reform under plans put forward this week.

The Renting Homes white paper published by the Welsh Government is an updated version of the Law Commission proposals that the previous government in England seemed to like at first, then dithered over and finally allowed to lapse at the last election.

So now Wales is set to reap the benefits of two simple and clearly understood forms of tenancy while England continues to cope with a mess of different ones. These are more than just technical, legal changes. The white paper argues that: ‘The current differences between renting a home from a local authority, housing association or private landlord contribute to weaknesses in the way the whole housing system works. Renting a home is not always seen as a good choice. Indeed, it is sometimes considered to be the last option.’

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

Worst fears

Posted: February 19, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Wales, Welfare reform | Leave a comment

So the government has finally admitted the potentially devastating consequences of welfare reform in a cumulative impact assessment.

Before anyone starts to think that Iain Duncan Smith has undergone a dramatic change of heart, I should add that I am of course taking about the Welsh government, not the UK one.

The second stage review of the impact of welfare reform in Wales is accompanied by an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) of the effects of welfare reform on labour supply in Wales.

Read the rest of this post on Inside Edge, my blog for Inside Housing

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