Lunchtime news Thursday 11 September 2023

Gordon Brown has announced a £1 billion package to help households cut their energy bills. Up to 11 million households will be offered free loft and cavity wall insulation while other households will receive a 50 per cent grant to cover the cost. Six hundred thousand of the poorest families will have lower ‘social tariffs’ by the end of the year, and households with pre-payment metres will be offered fairer rates. Meanwhile the country’s 10 million pensioners and benefit claimants will receive a tripling in severe weather payments, although only if the temperature dips to 0C for seven days in a row.

All councils in England should be able to keep income from council house rents to better plan for quality housing in the long term and improve services to tenants, says the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH). CIH submitted its comments to the government review of the housing revenue account, calling for an end to the process of redistributing revenue between councils. It beleives councils should be able to keep any surplus income at local level and wants them to have the power, together with tenants, to set their own rent levels within guidelines.

Caroline Flint has announced changes in the planning laws to make it easier for households to extend into their loft or build an extension. The changes will mean that as many as 80,000 houses will no longer need to apply for planning permission. However, there will be new restrictions on homeowners who want to pave over their front gardens. The government said the changes will save the taxpayer up to £50 million when they come in on 1 October. The move has been welcomed by the Local Government Association as a boost to the construction industry.

The Conservatives are urging the government to suspend home information packs to give an immediate boost to the housing market. The packs are deterring speculative sellers, reducing sales, and stopping people from switching agents, said Conservative housing spokesperson Grant Shapps. Mr Shapps said he would use a little-known provision in the legislation to scrap them immediately the Tories came to government.

Meanwhile Mr Shapps has accused the NHS of failing homeless people by not offering them the support they need when released from hospital. Figures obtained show the number of homeless people treated in hospital has risen by 28 per cent in four years and the underlying cause for the rise was the NHS not liaising with local services so the patients ended back in hospital: ‘The NHS is under such pressure to get people out quickly that it does not have the time to offer the support to homeless people that they need.’

The housing shortage is worse in the North East than anywhere else in the country, according to a report by the National Housing Federation. One in eight – or 270,000 households in Yorkshire and Humberside – are on the social housing waiting list, compared with one in 13 nationally. The area has seen its stock of social housing fall by more than any other region, while it has one of the highest proportions of homeless people in the UK.

A council has applied to the Scottish government to stop the right to buy of council houses due to a lack of affordable housing in the area. If approved, tenants who moved into their homes after 30 September 2023 would not be able to buy their property for five years.