Lunchtime news Monday 10th September

Home Information Packs (Hips) become compulsory for three-bedroom homes in England and Wales from today. Generally opposed to by estate agents and surveyors, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) claims that the introducution of Hips for four-bedroom houses in August has more than halved the sales in certain areas of four-bedroom properties. The increased covereage means that 60 per cent of total housing stock is now covered by Hips.

The Trades Union Congress, meeting in Brighton for its annual conference, has launched a campaign calling for the abolition of rules that allow wealthy people to avoid paying UK tax by claiming they are non-domiciled in the country. With the top three per cent of the population owning three times as much as the whole of the bottom half, the TUC believe ‘the super-rich distort the housing market – with house prices following top pay, not average pay…The result is that many would-be first time buyers and vital public service workers can’t get a foot on the housing ladder and even chronic housing need is no guarntee of decent social housing’.

A survey by Inside Housing has found that some families are waiting a decade or more for a home of their own. One family waited 27 years for a four-bedroom property in the London borough of Westminster. With fewer family homes being built, and supplies of larger houses reduced due to right to buy policies, two of the 51 English councils surveyed, reported a 10-year average wait, 13 had an average wait of four years and 17 had an average of three or more years for a three-bedroom house.

A new twist on the north/south divide courtesy of the Mirror. People in affluent Didcot, Oxon, can expect to reach 86 before suffering a serious ailment while those in Middlesbrough’s docklands area of Middlehaven will on average fall victim to disease before 55.

Many homeowners have lost their homes despite assurances that their individual voluntary arrangement (IVA), agreement offered protection from repossession, reports the Guardian

The government’s latest homelessness figures for the second quarter of 2007 show that the number of households found to be homeless has decreased by 30 per cent since 1997/98.