ROOF Blog

Meanwhile, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said yesterday that financial service firms must make sure their customers understand what they are letting themselves in for when signing up for mortgages, consider loans and other products. The OECD has just released new guidelines designed to avoid a repeat of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and subsequent credit crunch that caused the worldwide recession.

The decline in property values and a drop in sterling has sent London tumbling down the list of the world’s most expensive cities for expatriates, according to the Mercer survey. London came third out of 143 cities in the poll last year, but has dropped to the sixteenth most expensive city this year. Tokyo topped this year’s rankings, followed by Osaka, Moscow – last year’s most costly city – with Geneva and Hong Kong taking the other two places in the top five.

The European parliament wants Spanish planning laws to be changed to stop developers being able to acquire private land below market rates and force homeowners from their properties. In some regions planning authorities have been redesignating private land for urban use and rubber-stamping applications from developers, who then offer well below the market rate for the property or threaten to demolish the home. The government ruled the planners’ actions illegal and an EU report called for Spain to protect the rights of homeowners.

Research has suggested that the tough policies designed to push asylum seekers out of the country by removing their support is simply forcing them to live on the streets, surviving on handouts. Last October, the Asylum Support Partnership counted almost 1,200 failed asylum seekers with no support or secure housing across the country day, from a group of 2,000 people found to be destitute with no housing or access to benefits or support. Half of these people came from Iraq, Iran, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.

While the world economy remains in a ‘strong slowdown’, the recession in the UK could be over in four months, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said. It based its prediction on an index of indicators in March including trends in stock markets and business surveys, and found that Britain, France and Italy were showing ‘tentative signs of a pause in the economic slowdown’.

The Department for Work and Pensions will sign an historic arrangement with five other countries to improve cooperation in tackling benefit fraud, which cost the UK £800 million annually. The United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Ireland have joined the UK in the ‘Windsor arrangement’ which aims to prevent, detect earlier and provide deterrence against benefit fraud.

The government is extending a hotline in Spain to dob in expat benefit cheats. It says that each year benefit fraud by Britons living abroad costs the UK taxpayers £63 million, and while official do not know how many people are making illegal claims or where they all live, they believe the majority of them are in Spain. Originally the hotline scheme was set up in Alicante, but will now be extended to cover the Costa del Sol and Canary Islands.

A table of the wellbeing of young people throughout European states has ranked Britain 24th out of 29 countries. The researchers assessed the countries on 43 separate measures, ranging from infant mortality to poverty and housing, and asked the children how they felt about their lives, schools and relationships. The Netherlands came out on top, while Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania and Malta are the only countries which came below the UK. The Child Poverty Action Group who commissioned the research made a number of recommendations including dropping means tests in favour of universal benefits such as child benefit and ensuring a decent home for every family.

Tensions between the Prime Minister, Bank of England and Treasury are bubbling away. Bank governor Mervyn King sided with the chancellor yesterday as he appeared before a Treasury select committee and warned Gordon Brown that the UK could not afford a second economic stimulus package. Meanwhile Mr Brown told European MEPs in Strasbourg that the EU had to take the lead in rehabilitating the world economy and before next week’s meeting of G20 leaders is calling for them to bring forward fiscal stimulus packages to back the world’s economies.

Companies in the UK can continue to force employees to retire at 65 without breaking EU rules the European Court of Justice ruled. The court backed the compulsory retirement age as long as it has a ‘legitimate aim’ and was related to ‘employment policy, the labour market or vocational training’. The case must now return to the High Court which will have to decide whether the aims of the government’s retirement age are legitimate. Age Concern, which took the case to court, is calling for an end to the default age saying it sends out mixed messages and argues that the government now has to ‘prove’ why forced retirement ages are needed.