Weekend news round-up 13 May

Gordon Brown’s first 10,000 home town will be built on the abandoned Oakington Barracks in Cambridgeshire reports the Express. The town will be one of five new eco-towns which will provide 100,000 new homes, reports the Observer.

Only 27 per cent of people surveyed by the website Propertyfinder.com know what a home information pack is, three weeks before they become compulsory for properties being sold reports the Sunday Times in a stats filled report on the housing market. The paper advises borrowers hit by the latest rate rise to remortgage without delay.

A draft order approving the Home Information Packs will be laid before the House of Lords on Thursday. The Sunday Telegraph reports that politicians are being urged by opponents of HIPs to block the packs through the upper house.

Slough is struggling to support over 90 Roma children, some as young as 10, who have arrived unaccompanied in the town from Eastern Europe.

The Observer meets a Hackney homeowner who won his house in a GLC lottery in 1977 and is surprised to hear it’s now worth nearer £800,000.