Tag Archives: housing

The Voice

LibLink … Vince Cable: Flash a red light on reckless lending

By The Voice | Tue 20th October 2009 - 6:20 pm

Over at The Times, the Lib Dems’ shadow chancellor Vince Cable argues that the Financial Services Authority’s review on mortgages doesn’t go far enough to prevent a return to banks’ wild excesses. Here’s an excerpt:

Some of the more aggressive banks, seeking to expand their market share, are relaxing their offerings in terms of loan-to-value ratios. Any eagerness to return to former lending practices should be a source of concern. The housing market has not adjusted, at least yet, to realistic levels. Historical trends show a cyclical pattern of boom and bust, lasting roughly 15 to 20 years, going back to

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The Voice

Teather: “We need a massive increase in the number of social homes”

By The Voice | Wed 29th July 2009 - 9:00 pm

Here are the facts, as reported by The Guardian based on this research by housing charity Shelter:

More than one million children in England now live in overcrowded homes, a rise of 54,000 in the last two years, a charity warned today. New figures released by Shelter highlight the record number of under-15-year-olds living in cramped conditions, with one in 10 children in overcrowded housing.

The figures, calculated from the government’s annual Survey of English Housing, reveal the problem is particularly acute in London and among those living in social housing. One in five (331,000) children in London and one

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Merlene Emerson

Opinion: Tories’ housing plot uncovered?

By Merlene Emerson | Mon 13th July 2009 - 3:45 pm

The Evening Standard published a bold article last Thursday suggesting that Hammersmith & Fulham Council and the Tory leadership were in a plot reminiscent of the days of Dame Shirley Porter (‘Plot to rid council estates of Poor’, 9 July 2009)

Hammersmith & Fulham Council is currently consulting on their Local Development Framework (LDF) Core Strategy Options which repeatedly refers to a need for ‘decent neighbourhoods’. Neighbourhoods that are currently not ‘decent’ have been identified throughout the borough.

It seems to me that if these neighbourhoods contained homes which do not meet national ‘decent homes standards’ then the Council and Hammersmith & Fulham Homes should be working to bring them up to standard. Where the neighbourhoods have residents who are jobless and on benefits, then the Council has a duty to provide training and improved skills. The solution should not be to demolish and decant whole estates.

The Council has, however, shown a preference for the easy fix by proposing the rebuilding of properties primarily for sale. The only assurance they provide existing residents is that the equivalent number of ‘habitable rooms’ (not number of units) for social renting will be preserved, and this over the next 20 years!

There are two conclusions that we can draw from this. First, many local residents will be without a home in Hammersmith & Fulham in years to come and will be likely to have to seek housing outside of the borough. Second, the Tory Council seems to be focussed on changing the demographics of their voters in this marginal constituency.

The present Labour MP Andrew Slaughter has felt suitably threatened and has raised the alarm claiming to have uncovered a trail of evidence showing possible complicity amongst the leadership of Hammersmith & Fulham Council – the Tory leadership as well as the right wing think tank, Localis – on this subject.

So what can we do about this?

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Posted in Local government, London and Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

Six (count ’em) families now benefitting from Labour’s mortage rescue scheme

By Stephen Tall | Wed 1st July 2009 - 7:45 am

There was a fair amount of mockery of the Government a couple of months ago when it was revealed that Labour’s flagship Mortgage Rescue Scheme, launched last autumn, had helped only one family up to the end of April.^

I said then that these things take time, Rome wasn’t built in a day etc. How prophetic, for today we discover that the figure of families helped by the Mortgage Rescue Scheme has rocketed … to six. Or 6 if you prefer. To be fair, that’s a 600% increase. On the debit side, the original intention was to help 6,000 families facing repossession.

Here’s what Our Vince had to say about it:

Helping just six families is absolutely pitiful and doesn’t even begin to address the scale of the problem. Vast reams of red tape stand in the way of families faced with repossession staying in their own homes. There are enormous time lags and the vast majority of people who think they are eligible find that they are not.

“Repossession is a ticking time bomb. Despite the predictions of a modest fall, the numbers of repossessions are likely to soar in the next two years because of rising unemployment. Temporary Government schemes are deferring the problem, not solving it. If interest rates start to rise next year, the problem will become even more severe.”

Vince was today leading a debate in Westminster Hall on this very issue of mortgage arrears and repossessions – you can read the Hansard transcript HERE. Here’s his conslusion:

Repossession is only really a problem because of the underlying lack of available housing, particularly social housing. If social housing was freely available, repossession would not be the tragedy and disaster it currently is. Are the Government, working with the charitable bodies, doing any research at the moment on what happens to people who become repossessed? I do not think that any of us know where those people actually go, although anecdotal evidence suggests that most of them go into the private rented sector, which of course presents problems of its own. Many people go into the private rented sector because they can then get housing benefit, which they found more difficult to get as owner-occupiers, but many of them are still in considerable difficulty.

There is still an issue about how to ensure greater availability of affordable housing in the long term.

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Alix Mortimer

PMQs: social housing and repossession

By Alix Mortimer | Wed 10th June 2009 - 12:23 pm

Cameron and Brown wrangle over the various parliamentary reform proposals. Cameron uses the election of two BNP MEPs to support his contention that a proportional system lets in extremists, and accuses Brown of only becoming interested in reform when he faces losing the next election. Brown looks somewhat less like a punchbag this week – that Monday night meeting of the parliamentary Labour party must have pepped him up a bit. In fact, his righteousness waxes so great that he proclaims Cameron “doesn’t deserve” to be Prime Minister.

Clegg asks about repossession rates, which he says the government is failing …

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Stephen Tall

Labour mortgage rescue scheme helps one family

By Stephen Tall | Fri 1st May 2009 - 9:04 pm

Very often when launching worthy initiatives politicans are wont to say something along the lines, “If it helps even one person it will have been worth it.” This is usually a rhetorical device, rather than a statistically exact prediction. But Labour has taken the idea to heart with its mortgage protection scheme – official figures show that to date just one family has benefited since it was launched by the government last autumn. Here’s The Guardian:

The scheme, part of a package of emergency measures rushed in last autumn after months of tumbling house prices, has been “operational across the

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Stephen Tall

Hancock to take £1,000 a year “tenants’ tax” protest to Parliament

By Stephen Tall | Tue 3rd March 2009 - 7:32 pm

Mike Hancock, Lib Dem MP for Portsmouth South, together with his fellow Portsmouth Lib Dems, has taken his campaign on behalf of council tenants to the highest levels, including Downing Street and Parliament. The issue? One that is faced by 156 councils around the country:

… council tenants are angry because each household will be paying £1,000 a year over the next thirty years directly into the Government’s coffers. The Government takes money from Portsmouth and 205 other councils. Some money is distributed back to councils. 50 councils benefit and 156 pay money to the Government but there is an overall surplus that the Government keeps of £194 million. Therefore a large surplus – £4.6 million this year from Portsmouth alone goes into general Government expenditure – effectively a tax that only council tenants have to pay. With large increases due in the amount taken in coming years, Portsmouth City Council estimates that unless it is reformed Portsmouth’s 15,000 council tenants will pay £500 million over the next 30 years to the Government – over £1,000 a year.

Mike presented the petition in Parliament last night – here’s Hansard’s (somewhat quaint) account of proceedings:

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Stephen Tall

Lib Dem housing proposals unveiled

By Stephen Tall | Fri 20th February 2009 - 6:50 pm

There was no escaping Lib Dem shadow housing minister Sarah Teather yesterday … not only did she put in a sparkling performance on BBC1’s Question Time, but, more importantly, she launched the party’s new plans to ‘rebuild social housing and rescue the construction industry’ (full details at the party website here). Which, ahem, LDV managed not to cover yesterday 😳 – fortunately, though, the proposals did earn plenty of coverage in the media:

BBC: Lib Dems unveil housing proposals – The Liberal Democrats have unveiled plans to boost the number of low cost homes and reduce repossessions. They say government efforts to do so have had little effect and suspending stamp duty on homes worth below £175,000 was a “waste of money”. They say more empty properties need to be used and firms with empty commercial properties should get incentives to let them out as temporary homes. … 

Launching their plans earlier, the Lib Dems said they would also introduce a “repair and renewal loan scheme” for people who own empty properties which they are prepared to lease for five years to housing associations. The party said the scheme would cost £400m over two years and would be paid for by scrapping Homebuy Direct, a scheme set up by the government to help first-time buyers on to the housing ladder. That would also allow commercial properties being used for housing, to claim commercial property rate relief – also funded by scrapping Homebuy Direct. The party believes young people – rather than families – would be prepared to live in empty commercial property for short periods of time at low rents.

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