Gordon Brown is expected to unveil plans today to increase the amount of energy from renewable sources to 15 per cent by 2020 and investing £100 billion in the industry, in what has been billed as the biggest shakeup in Britain’s power generation since the industrial revolution. Under theRead More →
The Policy Exchange warns the next government that it must be prepared to make ‘radical and immediate cuts’ to spending, or face a debt crisis. It said that the next government must cancel the increases in spending, because it was ‘much easier not to raise spending than it isRead More →
Gordon Brown is facing an embarrassing climbdown over his eco-town plans, as fierce local resistance and a disintegrating house market has forced the government to reduce the shortlist to only five sites, from the original 12 put forward by developers. But there is no guarantee that all five willRead More →
A lack of new sites is forcing Gypsies and Travellers to live on housing estates against their will, new research from the London Gypsy and Traveller Unit has found. Up to 80 per cent of Travellers living in permanent homes said they wanted to leave, but a shortage ofRead More →
The Rugg review – published yesterday – has set out a swathe of proposals designed to tighten up regulation in the private rented sector and protect tenants in the event of their landlord defaulting on the mortgage. The report proposed a series of recommendations that would turn letting propertyRead More →
The Post Office and local councils should fill the gap in mortgage lending left by the banking sector, a former Labour minister has suggested. Chris Leslie, now director of the New Local Government Network, said that there had been a ‘collapse of trust’ in private lenders and the governmentRead More →
An eco-village in South Gloucestershire, which has been billed as England’s first large scale zero carbon development, has been given full planning permission. Hanham Hall, a development between Barratt Developments and the Homes and Communities Agency will have 195 zero-carbon homes built to the highest level 6 standards, andRead More →
House building targets to build three million new homes by 2020 are ‘under threat’ or ‘very, very challenging’ because of the credit crunch according to the director of housing and planning at Communities and Local Government; while new housing minister Margaret Beckett has rejected calls in parliament for theRead More →
The credit squeeze and the rise in mortgage rates are having an impact on the housing market, with the growth in house prices likely to slow for the rest of the year, according to the Financial Times. The latest index showed prices in England and Wales grew 0.3 perRead More →
AN EXTRA 40,000 HOMES will be built in the London part of the Thames Gateway under an interim plan announced by communities secretary Ruth Kelly today. The plan envisages 160,000 homes rather than the previous 120,000, with the extra 40,000 being built on sites identified by the Greater LondonRead More →