ROOF Blog archive

Housing and Planning Minister John Healey has proposed a more consumer-friendly green rating for homes that will promote energy efficient properties and reduce future utility bills by up to £1500 a year in the most energy efficient homes. The Code for Sustainable Homes was ratified in April 2007 as a standard to measure improvement in the overall sustainability of new homes. Mr Healey is proposing changes in the Code to make it easier for consumers, whether they are developers or individuals simply wanting to grade and track the sustainability of their properties. Mr Healey said: ‘Our homes account for a quarter of UK carbon emissions, so it’s clear they are a vital part of our efforts to tackle climate change. The Code has proved its worth but now is the time to make it a more user-friendly standard for consumers. In the future, this will help drive uptake so people will save more money on bills and reduce the carbon footprint of new homes.’

New research has highlighted that only half of households facing repossession orders actually attend their court hearings. There is also an indication that repossessions are not being considered the option of last resort by the courts. The research, undertaken by CIH’s consultancy arm, ConsultCIH, looked at hundreds of repossession orders made in 2008. The research found that many households are in denial about losing their homes. Conversely, others believe the loss of their home is a foregone conclusion by the time their case gets to court.

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have successfully prosecuted a housing society and a plumber following a boiler explosion that killed a tenant. Prosecution proceedings were started after tenant Christine Goodall, 65, was killed at her home in Gloucestershire in 2007 when an incorrectly decommissioned boiler exploded. The fatal incident occurred when Mrs Goodall lit a fire for the first time since the back boiler had been decommissioned in 1999.

Mortgage lending fell by 10 per cent during November as the market suffered its traditional seasonal slowdown, figures showed today. A total of £12bn was advanced during the month, down from £13.3bn in October and 14 per cent less than in November last year, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). The group said a modest decline was typically seen between October and November, although the 10 per cent fall was ‘a little larger’ than normal. But it added that market conditions were holding steady and it did not expect much change during the coming months. The CML’s economist, Paul Samter, said: ‘There could be a modest decline in underlying house buying activity in early 2010 due to the stamp duty holiday ending, with activity ‘bunching’ over the last few months of 2009.’

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has shortlisted 265 bids totalling nearly £550m in round two of its Kickstart housing delivery programme.

Shortlisted bidders include a mix of RSLs along with national and local developers aiming to unlock up to 22,000 homes across the country.

Bidding opened in September with the criteria that eligible schemes should be housing-led with a minimum of 50 homes (fewer in rural areas or if the scheme delivers to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 or 6) and that sites should have detailed planning consent in place or the ability to achieve this by the end of March 2010.

Sir Bob Kerslake, HCA chief executive, said: ‘Kickstart continues to be a crucial component in maintaining momentum in the house building industry.’

A due diligence process will now follow, which will look in detail at value for money, design, financial viability and risk, as well as an assessment of quick delivery.

Bargain-hunters returned to the house building sector yesterday after a leading broker anticipated healthy gains for investors over the next year.

Citigroup laid the foundations for a recovery after turning buyer of Redrow, up 8½p to 131p, Barratt Developments, 6½p higher at 116p and Taylor Wimpey, 1¾p better at 35½p.

The sector has lost a fifth of its value over the past quarter over consumer spending fears for next year, but house prices, mortgage applications and housing transactions data indicate a more positive story, according to Citigroup, which reckoned shares could rebound at least 30 per cent.

Anyone who starts work after six months on benefit will be at least £40 a week better off, under a guarantee yesterday by Yvette Cooper, the work and pensions secretary.

Other proposed changes to housing benefit aim to cut some of the highest rents the state pays for out-of-work people, and to reduce the immediate impact on rent payments for people moving into work.

In an employment white paper and housing benefit review, Ms Cooper confirmed a government promise of a job, training or work experience after six months’ unemployment for anyone aged 18 to 24.

Some 100,000 posts will be made available, including police community support officers, work in the NHS and probation service, and constructing a national cycle network.

The number of repossessions orders taken out by mortgage lenders rose by three per cent during the third quarter of the year to 13,987, figures from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) have shown.

Despite the increase, the FSA said the number was ‘much in line’ with the average for the year as a whole and six per cent below the figure for the first quarter of the year.

The drop is likely to have been driven by interest rate cuts at the start of the year, which made mortgages more affordable, and increased government help for struggling borrowers.

The FSA said the number of borrowers who had fallen into mortgage arrears of more than 1.5 per cent of their outstanding loan had fallen for the third successive quarter, and at 46,000 was down 10 per cent on the three months between April and June and 30 per cent below the peak in the last three months of 2008.

Mortgage lenders are failing to follow rules designed to help people avoid repossession, according to a damning report published today.

The joint report by AdviceUK, Citizens Advice and Shelter found that in a third of recorded cases mortgage lenders had failed to comply with new rules – known as the ‘pre-action protocol’ – requiring them to take court action as a last resort only.

Before starting legal action, lenders should offer borrowers other options for dealing with their arrears – however, judges only verified they had done so in a handful of cases.

Published on the same day as new repossession figures are expected from the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the ‘Turning the Tide?’ report is based on research into hundreds of cases seen by advisers who give last-minute advice to people at court on the day of their repossession hearings.

The seemingly inexhaustible demand for property meant that house prices continued to rise last month, despite a fresh supply of stock coming on to the housing market.

The proportion of estate agents reporting an increase rather than a decrease in house prices was at its highest for three years, according to figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).

The figures show that 35 per cent of surveyors reported rising rather than falling prices in the past three months, up from 34 per cent in October and the highest quarterly reading since November 2006.

Three weeks after last month’s devastating Cumbria floods, the Environment Agency is urging owners of damaged properties to insist that insurers repair their homes and businesses to be more flood-resilient.

Properties affected by flooding are often simply returned to their previous state, meaning that similar damage is likely if flooding occurs in future.

Repairing a property that has been flooded offers a chance to minimise the damage and disruption that could be caused by any future flood.

The recession’s toll on consumers will be laid bare today as Bank of England figures show that nearly a third of workers have had their household income drop by at least £1,200 a year amid soaring unemployment, shorter working hours and pay freezes.

About 30 per cent of manual workers and 27 per cent of office workers said that their disposable income – money left to spend each month after paying tax, housing costs, utility bills and loan payments – had fallen by £100 or more over the past 12 months, according to the Bank’s ‘Quarterly Bulletin’.

Figures in last week’s pre-Budget report reveal 60,000 low-income families now face paying 90 per cent of any earnings directly to the taxman.

The number of affected families is up from 30,000 last year and is forecast to rise again to 70,000 next year.

The very high tax rates arise from complex rules that mean low income families have their benefits slashed if they take up work.

These so-called marginal tax rates – far higher than those faced by top earners – are blamed for discouraging thousands from seeking work.

Average household wealth in the south-east of England is almost twice that in Scotland, according to the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) first ‘Wealth in Great Britain’ report, which also found that London was not as wealthy as you might think.

The ONS painted a detailed picture of affluence and borrowing habits after collecting evidence from 31,000 households across Britain and estimating the value of their housing, pension investments and other possessions.

For many of the respondents to the survey, accumulating a healthy portfolio of assets was a distant dream: the least wealthy 10 per cent of households had negative total net wealth – owing more on their mortgages or other loans than their properties and other goods are worth.

The era in which all Britons aspire to own their own home may be coming to an end, according to the Housing minister, John Healey.

In a controversial speech, he suggested that Britain may be moving towards a European model, with renting on a roughly equal footing with buying.

He said home ownership had fallen from 71 per cent of households in 2003 to 68 per cent today, noting that this trend began in 2005, well before the recession.

A new model with greater flexibility is needed, he argued, allowing people to change from buying to renting without moving home.

‘Not all or nothing, but a flexible system which suits the different stages in people’s lives,’ he said.

The true extent of the financial pain that will be felt by households and public services over the next few years has been laid bare by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

Even those on half typical earnings will see their living standards suffer as a result of the Chancellor’s policies, the think-tank warns. 

To protect the ‘ringfenced’ areas of hospitals, schools and the police, there will have to be savage cuts to defence, housing, transport and higher education budgets.

Cuts of almost seven per cent a year, 20 per cent over three years, mark the severest squeeze since the Second World War, tougher than anything in the austerity years of the 1970s or early 1980s.

The IFS analysis of the Chancellor’s pre-Budget report also shows a £76bn ‘black hole’ in the public finances; that fixing it will cost every family £2,400 a year; and that only those on less than £14,000 will be better off as a result of the changes.

A total of 55,300 mortgages for house purchases were granted by lenders in October, the highest number since December 2007, the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said today.

Activity in the housing market has increased markedly since reaching a trough in January when just 23,000 home loans were advanced during the month.

The bulk of the market is made up of home movers, with 35,600 of October’s loans going to borrowers who already own a property, a 49 per cent increase on the same period last year.

However, first-time buyer numbers have also recovered since the start of the year, more than doubling from 8,900 in January to 19,700.

Homeowners facing repossession or struggling to meet mortgage payments after losing their jobs will continue to receive extra support from the government following the pre-Budget report.

The government has said it will freeze the standard interest rate used to calculate its Support for Mortgage Interest (SMI) at 6.08 per cent for a further six months. It said the SMI scheme has benefited around 220,000 homeowners.

From April this year, the government said it would cover the monthly interest due on mortgages of up to £200,000 for borrowers who have been out of work for three months and were having difficulty meeting their payments.

Previously it only offered support to homeowners with mortgages of £100,000 or less.

First-time buyers were dealt a blow in the pre-budget report when the chancellor announced that the current stamp duty holiday would not be extended beyond the end of the year.

Alistair Darling also scrapped plans to raise the threshold for inheritance tax from £325,000 to £350,000. Currently, anyone buying a property for £175,000 or less avoids paying one per cent stamp duty.

This threshold has been in place since September 2008 when the chancellor increased it from £125,000.

Since the stamp duty holiday was introduced, about 132,500 house-purchase mortgage transactions have escaped the tax, according to research by the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

This accounts for more than a quarter of the 486,400 house purchase loans in the period.

People who generate electricity from home wind turbines and solar panels will not have to pay tax on the money they make by selling it to the national grid, the Chancellor announced in the pre-Budget report.

From April 2010, the £900 a year they typically make from electricity sales to the grid under so-called ‘feed-in tariffs’ will be tax-free. This will save a basic-rate taxpayer £180 a year and a higher-rate taxpayer £360 a year.

The government also announced that it would take steps to encourage poor households to generate their own electricity.

Although home generation equipment often pays for itself over its lifetime, the Treasury said, the initial costs can discourage low-income families from installing it.

Research from the Office for National Statistics shows that almost one in five graduates in their late twenties now live with their parents.

By contrast, only one in eight university graduates had failed to fly the nest by the same age 20 years ago.

Rising property prices, mounting student debts and the effects of recession on the job market have forced a wave of young people to move back into the family home at an age when they would normally be moving out.

The research suggests that young people in Britain are twice as likely to live with their parents in their late twenties than their counterparts elsewhere in Europe.

A ground-breaking website that exposes the quality of public services – from children’s welfare to council recycling, and crime fighting to teaching – goes live today.

Oneplace, an ambitious collaboration involving six independent inspectorates, is intended to provide a consumer guide to the performance of local authorities, police forces, schools, NHS primary care trusts, prisons and probation services.

The website draws together assessments by the Audit Commission, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission, and the inspectorates of constabulary, probation and prisons.

Reports on the overall performance of councils in England, and ratings for children’s services, are also revealed, highlighting the best and worst.

The monthly Halifax house price index shows that house prices jumped by a bigger than expected 1.4 per cent in November, spurred on by higher demand and a shortage of properties for sale.

The increase was the fifth successive monthly rise with prices more than four per cent higher over the first 11 months of the year. The average cost of a house in the UK is now £167,664.

However, that is still 1.6 per cent cheaper than this time last year, and the recovery in house prices that we’ve seen in the past six months is unlikely to be sustained next year, analysts warned.

Seema Shah, a property economist at Capital Economics, said: ‘With the economic recovery likely to be lacklustre, unemployment set to rise and household incomes likely to be under downward pressure from pay freezes, house price falls remain the most likely outcome next year.’

Tax rebates for people who ‘go green’ by installing solar panels or wind turbines on their homes or swapping their company car for an electric vehicle will be announced by Alistair Darling tomorrow.

Although his pre-Budget report will include few giveaways as he promises to rein in a £180bn budget deficit this year, the Chancellor will give householders and drivers a financial incentive to play their part in saving the planet.

At present, people who sell electricity to the National Grid are taxed on the income. In future, it will be exempt from tax.

A householder on basic rate tax selling £900 of electricity to the grid from April would receive the full amount, instead of £720 as at present.

Liberty and Housing Justice are among the charities that have become so alarmed about the ways in which the human rights of rough sleepers are increasingly being threatened by the authorities that they have produced ‘The Rights Guide for Rough Sleepers’.

In the run-up to the London Olympics in 2012, which is also Mayor Boris Johnson’s deadline for ending rough sleeping in London, the number and the severity of enforcement measures against rough sleepers has been growing.

The guide will clearly set out the rights of homeless people so that they know what their legal position is.

Thirty years ago this month – on 20 December 2023 – the new Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher published its housing bill, changing the social face of Britain with one of the most popular political promises in history: the Right to Buy.

Today the repercussions are still being felt. This year the number of council houses sold off passed the two million mark; so too did the numbers of people across Britain on waiting lists for a council house, up almost 10 per cent in a year.

Some inner-city areas would need decades to clear their backlog.

With house building all but stopped in a recession that has seen repossessions and unemployment rise, there is a crisis in Britain’s homes, and the finger of blame is pointed firmly at that ‘social revolution’ of 1979.

The meltdown in the American housing market is not over yet, with experts warning that a rise in home foreclosures next year and in 2011 could undermine the chances of a sustained economic recovery in the United States.

The Obama administration has set aside $75 billion (£46 billion) under its homeowner bailout plan, known as the Home Affordable Modification Programme, to allow up to four million American homeowners to reduce their monthly mortgage payments and keep them from defaulting on their loans.

Yet despite efforts by the US Treasury Department to step up pressure on mortgage companies to modify more loans, take-up has been slow and the programme has been widely condemned for providing insufficient help to borrowers who have lost their jobs or who owe more than their homes are worth.

In the build-up to the pre-Budget report this Wednesday, Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC) says the typical British family already faces a decline of 2.4 per cent, or £300 a year, in its discretionary spending power, after tax, mortgages, food and other essentials.

The best-off will see their spending power cut by as much as nine per cent, almost £5,000 a year, the most vicious assault on their living standards in three decades.

The impact of swingeing income tax and national insurance hikes, VAT increases, expected moves back to more normal mortgage rates and higher petrol and transport costs, thanks to the latest boom in world oil prices, will all conspire to devastate the household budgets of the better-off.

Boris Johnson’s key election pledge to build 50,000 affordable homes in London in his first three years in office will not be delivered, City Hall has admitted.

The Mayor’s deputy for planning Sir Simon Milton said the target must be pushed to 2012 due to the downturn.

The number of affordable homes started since Mr Johnson was elected is 6,500, with 9,080 completions. At that rate the number built by May 2011 would be between 13,000 and 21,000.

Nicky Gavron, Labour’s housing representative on the London Assembly, said: ‘This is yet another broken promise’.

As many as 95,200 homeowners over the last two years decided they could no longer remain in their properties because of fights with neighbours, according to a survey.

However, the most common reasons for moving home saw one in three households move to climb up the property ladder and one in five moving because they needed more room, based on a total of 680,000 home owners moving since 2007.

Other popular reasons for moving home included relocating to a new job and moving into a better school catchment area.

Homeowners who are selling their properties are required by law to declare any arguments they have had with their neighbours.

Older people should be offered accommodation in bright, purpose-built communities instead of the shabby and cramped care homes where many now reside, according to a new report.

The provision of desirable retirement homes would encourage pensioners to sell their current properties, giving young families a greater chance of raising their children in suburban homes with gardens, it says.

The Housing our Ageing Population Panel for Innovation (HAPPI) was commissioned by Communities and Local Government and the Department of Health to come up with creative proposals to improve housing for older people.

After visiting ‘model’ retirement communities in European countries including Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden it has called for a local authorities and housebuilders to radically rethink their approach to elderly accommodation.

The best developments all had ‘space, light, accessibility and a shared sense of purpose’, with large communal areas where residents could socialise, it found.

The panel said there was no reason why homes in the UK could not be architecturally interesting and built in desirable neighbourhoods.

Housebuilders and construction workers have begun a campaign to fight off a new tax crackdown on the building trade, which the industry claims will stifle the sector’s recovery and make it difficult to hit government housing targets.

The Home Builders Federation and the Federation of Master Builders will launch its Stop the Unfair Building Tax campaign today to try to persuade the government to rethink proposals that the industry says will push more workers into the black market.

The Government wants to stamp out false self-employed status in the building industry, which it says costs the Exchequer £350 million a year.

It proposes to collect tax and national insurance contributions from an estimated 300,000 workers who claim self-employed status.

Workers will be deemed employees unless they supply their own materials and equipment, or other people’s labour as well as their own.

Thousands of frail and elderly people are living in care homes that fail to meet the most basic standards, a damning report has revealed.

In the most comprehensive assessment yet of homes in England, new watchdog the Care Quality Commission (CQC) found that more than 10,000 people are living in squalid conditions and receiving inadequate care.

The CQC has threatened to close 400 homes unless they are improved immediately. It described a further 3,500 homes, where 70,000 people reside, as ‘adequate’, the second-lowest rating.

It criticised councils for sending people to the worst homes, apparently with little regard for their welfare.

Local authorities foot the bill for about half the 440,000 care home residents.

The government has unveiled its vision of hi-tech homes with ‘smart’ meters acting as a cornerstone of a more efficient, greener electricity grid system.

British Gas and other power suppliers have been given responsibility for installing meters in each of Britain’s 26m homes by 2020, enabling them to read consumption levels remotely and end the use of estimated bills.

The gadgets would also allow homeowners to monitor their own gas and electricity usage – and production if they have solar panels or wind turbines.

However, a row over the £8.5bn outlay for smart meters threatened to overshadow the announcement with critics warning that the energy companies might pocket the benefits.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) said the cost of the scheme would be dwarfed by the £14.5bn of expected savings as power companies reduce administrative costs and consumers benefit from lower bills.

Google is in talks with British estate agents to launch an online property portal, which experts say could pose a serious threat to existing property websites and local newspapers.

The US internet search company launched a property portal in Australia last August through which estate agents list properties for free, showing both pictures taken from its Street View service and details on a map.

Estate agents and property websites expect Google to launch a similar portal in the UK in early 2010, attracting substantial advertising revenue.

Ed Mead at Douglas & Gordon’s, the estate agency, said it had spoken to Google about the plans:

‘It looks very simple. If it stays free, then Google has a massive winner on its hands as it will get the backing from estate agents currently paying for rival sites.’

One in four English local authorities would take more than 10 years to house everyone on their council housing waiting list, it was revealed today.

Shelter says a total of 82 authorities would take between a decade and 33 years to clear their waiting lists, or until 2019 to 2042.

With the national waiting list reaching almost 1.8 million households, but only just over 270,000 homes let nationally last year, the average time for all councils to end their lists would be almost seven years.

Of the 355 local authorities, Barnet, in North West London, would take the longest to house everyone on its waiting list at more than 33 years, followed by Redbridge in East London at more than 32 years, and Brent on 25 years.

Shelter has blamed the severe shortage of affordable homes, and has called on political parties to make housing a top election priority.

Nine new locations have been given permission to proceed with developing plans for new settlements which meet environmentally-friendly standards, and will receive a share of £5 million in Government funds.

To qualify to become an eco-town a development must have 5,000 homes, at least 30 per cent of which should be affordable for those on low incomes, and contain low-carbon services, buildings, transport and energy.

Shoreham Harbour and a second site in Northstowe, Cambridge, have already begun development and will be redesigned to meet higher levels of sustainability.

Five more local authorities are seeking to set up potential eco-towns across 10 locations.

A member of the Bank of England’s interest rate setting committee has called for the introduction of a tax on housing that would act as an ‘automatic stabiliser’ to help avoid real estate bubbles like the one that helped to cause the financial crisis.

Adam Posen, an American academic and external member of the Monetary Policy Committee, countered suggestions that central banks should have been quicker to raise rates in the run up to the crisis, arguing that tighter monetary policy would have had little effect in halting bubbles.

Citing the greater damage caused by housing slumps than by collapses in prices of other assets such as equities or commercial property following booms, Mr Posen proposed that new tools need to be created in order to target the residential real estate market in particular.

The Liberal Democrats today downgraded one of their highest-profile policies of the last year, announcing they would double the value of properties they would tax if in power from a threshold of £1m to £2m.

The new £2m threshold could hit 35,000 homes in London and 80,000 across the south-east and the party said the new levy would actually end up generating more revenue.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg said today his party had ‘looked in more detail’ at property values.

He added: ‘We don’t want family homes caught up in local property bubbles to be hit. We want to ensure that only the very wealthy pay this tax – pay their fair share so that we can offer tax cuts for everybody else.’

Britons repaid debt for a fourth consecutive month in October and at the fastest pace on record, the Bank of England said.

The Bank also released other data showing the money supply is still contracting in spite of £200bn of quantitative easing.

People paid off nearly £600m of unsecured debt such as overdrafts and credit cards last month – three times as much as City pundits had expected – and twice the repayment rate of September.

The figures show that the UK’s build-up of up to £228bn of unsecured debt in the decade before the credit crunch has now gone firmly into reverse, although since July consumers have only repaid £1.3bn of that total.

The figures also showed that new mortgage approvals inched up to 57,300 last month from 56,200 in September but remained well below the long-run average.