ROOF Blog

Council taxes will rise in the next financial year by 1.8%, the lowest figure since the levy was introduced nearly two decades ago. John Denham, communities secretary, claimed that the slightly below-inflation rise had been made possible by a 4% increase in central funding for councils from next month. But he acknowledged that there would be growing pressures on town hall budgets in the coming months against the wider backdrop of the UK’s large deficit. ‘Local people will rightly be intolerant of any council if they are told that care, libraries or youth services will be cut because they have not followed our radical reforms to protect the frontline services, which matter most to people,’ he said. The increase, the most modest since the tax was introduced in 1993-94, brings the bill for an average band D property to £1,439, from £1,414 this year.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has announced that Saxon Weald and Eastbourne borough council have been successful in a bid for almost £6.2 million grant funding to develop an extra care scheme in Langney. Derry Court and the land adjacent to it, owned by East Sussex county council, will be developed together to achieve the purpose built scheme.  The development is forecast to provide 62 high-quality self-contained apartments for older people who have an assessed care need and require support with daily living.

Today 96 charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises will receive over £2.27 million in Government grants to improve vital facilities they provide for their communities. The grants, worth up to £30,000 each, are part of the Capital Investment Programme delivered by Capacitybuilders. They support small scale improvements to resource centres which result in improved availability, or quality and accessibility of accommodation or shared facilities for local third sector organisations.

Tenants, MPs, local councillors and trade unionists from across Britain will come together on March 19 at the Defend Council Housing (DCH) national conference to defend the future of council housing and demand that politicians listen to council tenants in the run up to the general election. DCH campaigns against ‘privatisation’ and for direct investment to provide decent, affordable, secure and accountable housing. The conference will discuss proposals for the future funding of council housing and hear from local campaigns fighting to insist Government meets its commitment to bring all housing up to a decent standard with no strings attached.

Housing associations are preparing for a funding crisis that will result in a shortfall of newly built social homes from next year. The Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) has warned of the risk that the needs of the poorest will not be met from 2011 as public money dries up, leaving housing associations less able to finance the social rented sector. The Tenant Services Authority (TSA) said that it expected the number of homes built by housing associations to fall from 50,000 a year last year to 40,000 a year after 2011. Even at current funding levels, housing associations — the main providers of UK social housing — said that, to stay afloat, they had been forced to switch away from provision of social rented homes and towards more lucrative home ownership schemes geared towards renters on higher incomes.

With the largest council housebuilding programme for nearly two decades already underway, housing minister John Healey has doubled government cash for new council homes. Mr Healey announced 73 councils covering every region of England will share an extra £122.6m. Councils will match this second round government grant bringing investment in this round to £246m, and total public investment in the programme as a whole to over £500m to build more than 4,000 new council homes for 8,000 people. In a clear break with council houses of the past, Mr Healey also confirmed that many will be new family homes, whilst all will be highly energy efficient and add to the mixed make-up of local neighbourhoods.