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Britain is set to move out of recession and record growth in GDP of 0.5 per cent in the current quarter, the Institute of Chartered Accounts in England and Wales will say this morning. The ICAEW’s business confidence monitor shows confidence among professionals has turned positive for the first time in two years. The organisation’s survey has closely tracked the economy and the ICAEW says it is therefore confident of predicting growth of 0.5 per cent this quarter. In a further sign of optimism, the CBI said Britain’s services sector, which accounts for about two-thirds of the economy, is finally stabilising. Britain’s economy has been a laggard in the developed world, showing a contraction of 0.8 per cent in the second quarter. While that was a marked improvement on the first quarter’s 2.4 per cent slump, France, Germany and Japan were all able to report growth over the same period.

Gordon Brown has pledged to build three million new homes by 2020, but house-building has collapsed as a result of the recession. Figures obtained by Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat housing spokesman, show that the Government owns 3,100 hectares of surplus land – an area equivalent in size to Slough. Separate figures kept by the Ministry of Defence show that the military owns another 1,585 hectares of empty land suitable for housing. Under government guidelines, land with housing on it can be sold within six months of falling empty, but may be left for three years if it does not contain property.  There are currently nearly two million people on housing waiting lists, but the level of new builds stood at just over 90,000 in the last financial year, compared to 156,000 the year before. Miss Teather said: ‘Ministers need to do a thorough audit of the surplus lands in their departments and work out what could be used to benefit homeless families.’

Chelsea Building Society has been lambasted by its industry body and the financial regulator for claiming that losses from fraudulent mortgages are multiplying across the sector. The embattled lender took a £41 million hit after unearthing a massive fraud on its buy-to-let and self-certification loan book. In an apparent move to deflect criticism over its internal controls, interim boss Stuart Bernau claimed that many lenders were facing hefty losses from illegally obtained loans. But the Building Societies Association was quick to counter his claim that lax risk management was endemic throughout the industry. BSA secretary general Adrian Coles said: ‘I can categorically state that no other society is exposed to mortgage fraud on this scale.

Figures revealing an upturn in home sales have been interpreted as evidence of a housing market revival. The number of properties changing hands last month jumped nearly a fifth compared with the previous month. Buyers were tempted back to the market as the traditional summer sales bounce was heightened by signs that house prices may have already hit the bottom. Owners sold 76,000 flats and houses last month – the highest monthly number since May 2008 and 17 per cent more than this June. The HM Revenue & Customs figures reinforce the optimism brought by a Council of Mortgage Lenders report that showed a 26 per cent surge in July mortgage lending. Meanwhile, property website Rightmove said that the number of estate agents and lettings agents advertising on its site rose by 1 per cent in the first half of this year

The benchmark ‘Neet’ rate – the proportion of 16- to 18-year-olds not in employment, education or training – is sharply up on a year ago, emphasising recession has affected young people disproportionately. The rise in the Neet level to almost 12 per cent in the second quarter also points to a gloomy outlook for the many teenagers who have left school this summer. Analysts are particularly worried about young people failing to get into work or training, because research suggests they are often damaged for life – at least in economic terms. The news that the most commonly used Neet rate continues to rise will disappoint civil servants because local authorities had finally seemed to be getting a grip on the problem on the eve of recession. It fell year-on-year in the second quarters of 2007 and 2008. Yesterday’s official figures also showed the absolute number of 18- to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training increased to its highest level since comparable records began in 2005, climbing by 105,000 year-on-year to 835,000.

The City was caught on the hop today with data showing higher-than-expected inflation last month. Consumer prices were unchanged in July from June, keeping the annual rate at 1.8 per cent – defying analysts’ forecasts of a fall to 1.5 per cent – government figures showed this morning. But the City and the Bank of England still expect inflation to dip to 1 per cent or below in coming months. The largest upward effect on consumer prices came from computer games and DVDs where prices rose this year but fell in July last year, the Office for National Statistics said, while food price inflation was the slowest since records began in 1997.

Northern Rock has halted payments on some of its debt to conserve capital - its first deferred payments since nationalisation. The bank, which recently reported first-half losses of £725 million, said it had taken the action because its capital base had fallen to a level below its minimum regulatory capital requirement. While the bank awaits approval for state aid, the Financial Services Authority is to allow it to operate with smaller capital reserves than the regulator would normally require. Those low capital levels in turn mean the FSA is to restrict the amount of mortgages Northern Rock can write this year to £4 billion - £1 billion short of the bank’s original target.

Hopes for a recovery in Britain’s housing market are rising again, according to a leading survey that predicts that property prices will rise over the next three months. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) will today say the balance of its members who expect prices to rise rather than fall in the next three months has climbed to 8 per cent, the highest reading since April last year. RICS believes part of the improved optimism comes as a result of demand from new buyers outstripping supply. However, a spokesman warned: ‘Although demand for property is continuing to rebound, it still remains low from a historical perspective. Crucially it is the lack of supply that is helping to underpin prices at the present time.’

Stronger spending on the high street and a pick up in activity in the housing market provided fresh evidence today that the British economy is emerging slowly from its steepest postwar decline. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors said its members were more upbeat about the outlook for house prices than they have been since the property market peaked in the spring of 2007, while the British Retail Consortium said good weather and bargain offers had tempted consumers into the shops last month. But both RICS and the BRC warned that recovery was tentative. Despite surveys from the Halifax and the Nationwide pointing to a summer rebound in house prices, RICS said that only 14 per cent of agents had reported rising property values in the latest three months, with 23 per cent recording a fall and 62 per cent no change. The BRC said retail sales in July were 3.6 per cent higher than in the same month a year ago.

Savers are being offered rates of almost 5 per cent above the Bank of England base rate as banks and building societies compete to raise cash to fund new mortgages and pay off wholesale borrowing they secured before the credit crunch. Interest rates paid on fixed-term savings accounts have increased by more than 50 per cent since March, figures from financial information firm Moneyfacts show, despite the base rate remaining at a historical low of 0.5 per cent. Over that period the average rate paid on five-year fixed-rate bonds has increased from 2.86 per cent to 4.38 per cent, while rates on four-year bonds have risen from an average of 2.89 per cent in March to 4.12 per cent .West Bromwich building society has launched a range of E Bonds, including a five-year bond paying 5.45 per cent on deposits of £5,000, while Barnsley building society has online bonds paying 5.4 per cent for five years and 5 per cent for three years. Instant access accounts are also getting more competitive, with Egg raising its interest rate to a market-leading 3.25 per cent last Friday.

Travellers have claimed almost £5 million in government funding to help them contest planning laws. Money from the Big Lottery Fund is being used for a programme to help traveller groups in the East Midlands, including seminars and forum meetings at which travellers will be able to ‘engage with the planners and policy makers’.

Leicestershire police claim a growing number of ‘professional’ beggars are using the money raised to pay for a luxury lifestyle. Last month Leicestershire police arrested 20 beggars on the streets of Leicester - none of whom were homeless. The police claim that one woman was begging at night after her office job so she could pay for a new kitchen in her flat. Sergeant Adrian Underwood, of Leicestershire police, said some beggars are making up to £200 a night tax free.

Homeowners with mortgage arrears are having their debt made worse by lenders who levy ‘high and excessive charges, MPs have warned. Borrowers in arrears could be charged as much as £35 for a letter or a phone call, or £150 for a visit from a debt counsellor, the Treasury Select Committee report found. It called on the Financial Services Authority to take a much more robust stance in tackling the charges and urged the regulator and Office of Fair Trading to review them to ensure they were fair. The committee said lenders should also be required to provide an itemised breakdown of the additional costs their arrears charges were supposed to cover.

More than 6,700 homes have been repossessed by banks in which the taxpayer has a major stake, as rising unemployment and pay cuts force homeowners to hand in their house keys. An analysis of the six-month figures reported by the banks last week shows that the number of customers having difficulty with repayments has risen, although some lenders believe there are signs that the stress is beginning to ease among some borrowers.At the end of June, Lloyds Banking Group – 43 per cent controlled by the taxpayer and owner of the country’s largest mortgage lender, Halifax - had the largest number of repossessed homes at around 3,000. Northern Rock, fully nationalised, had 2,522 on its books, while Royal Bank of Scotland, 70 per cent taxpayer-owned, had 567. The latest data available for Bradford & Bingley is for the end of December 2008 when the figure stood at 643.The lenders say that despite the difficulties facing many customers, the level of repossessions is not rising sharply. Lloyds said its repossessions were down 7 per cent while Northern Rock also has 1,000 fewer homes in possession compared with the end of last year.

The average will UK house price grow by 2 per cent between the fourth quarter of 2009 and the end of 2010, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). There is a good chance that they will rise even more quickly, thanks to the unprecedented collapse in new homebuilding, it added. The prediction comes after Halifax reported that house prices rose by 1.1 per cent in July, the second rise in three months. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, which predicted at the start of the year that prices could fall by some 15 per cent, also said it now thought that in fact home values could actually increase in 2009.

Youth unemployment is expected to have topped a million last month amid a rise in the total jobless figure for July of 250,000 to 2.5 million. Economists say that the only consolation from the figures that are due out on Wednesday is that the growth rate of unemployment is slowing. In June almost a million young people were out of work after the biggest increase in unemployment since Labour came to power.Youth unemployment soared to a 16-year high, with 17.3 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 without a job — up from 15 per cent in February. Almost a third of those aged between 16 and 17 who left school after GCSEs are also out of work. Unemployment among the young is set to rise over the summer months as a new generation of school-leavers and graduates struggle to find work. Total unemployment is forecast to continue rising to a peak of three million next year.

Promised public spending to stimulate the construction sector is failing to find its way to the building site, compounding the effects of the sharpest contraction the industry has suffered since records began, according to a survey of the industry. Central government has pledged to bring forward £3 billion of public spending from 2010-11 to the current year to mitigate the impact of the downturn in private construction spending. But the Construction Products Association said that a survey of members found that 57 per cent of civil engineers, who build big public works such as schools, hospitals and infrastructure, had found public work had declined over the past year and the fall was accelerating. One in seven redundancies in the six months to the end of March were in the construction sector, according to the Office for National Statistics, and some analysts estimate the industry could shed 500,000 jobs through the downturn.