Lunchtime news Wednesday 20 August 2023

Inequality is damaging children’s health, education and general well-being, and the growing divide between rich and poor is undermining work to bring down the number of children living in poverty, the TUC says. Its report found the class divide between the top and bottom tenth of the population has more than doubled since 1979.

In an article for the Guardian, shadow chancellor George Osborne has delivered a blunt assessment of the government’s policy on child poverty. Mr Osborne says the government has failed in redistributing wealth, with life expectancy gap between rich and poor at its widest since the Victorian era. The time has come to end the target driven top down approach, he said, adding that the free market provides the fairest way of rewarding people.

Empty homes are increasing in England for the first time in nine years, according to the Empty Homes Agency. An increase of almost 10,000 brought the overall figure of empty homes to 672,924, with the biggest increases in cities such as Liverpool, Leeds and Oldham. A spokesperson for EHA said it expects the number to continue to rise.

Homeowners may soon be able to claim a cash refund if their local council fails to deliver services such as emptying rubbish bins or if street repairs are not carried out in time. Communities secretary Hazel Blears is to set out the details of the ‘right to redress’ next week as part of the autumn government fightback planned by Downing Street. However council leaders complain that the new scheme will land them with ‘pointless bureaucracy’ that will cost them more than the level of compensation.

The UK mortgage market is likely to shrink by almost 20 per cent this year, followed by a further drop of three per cent next year, research from data analysts Datamonitor indicates. Fewer lenders operating, a shrinking number of products, higher prices and more people being refused credit mean the outlook is very different from the 19.3 per cent growth in 2006. But there are signs that competition is slowly returning to the market as lenders have started cutting their interest rates during the past weeks.

Meanwhile the latest figures from the National Association of Estate Agents reveal that the number of househunters dropped sharply in July to an average of 192 per agent, down from 226 in June. The percentage of first-time buyers in the market has also dropped – more than 1 per cent to stand at 10.7 per cent of buyers. President of the NAEA blames the chancellor’s indecision regarding a stamp duty holiday, however he argues that the market is levelling out as reflected in the stable figures for the number of sales agreed.

However, if you have purchased a student buy-to-let then you are unlikely to be too troubled. The latest research found that rental yields for student accommodation in the best performing towns is more than 10 per cent, with Nottingham the best student town to buy in, followed by Durham. The average rental yield is 7.9 per cent for the top ten university towns, which far outstrips the UK average of 6.4 per cent.