Section: Yesterday's News

Five Years Back

In July 2001 we were reporting:

The twenty successful bidders in Round 1 of the Neighbourhood Management Pathfinders programme were announced. The £45 million scheme will provide funds to deprived communities to help in the appointment of neighbourhood managers and take forward a plan of action to improve local services...
Home Secretary David Blunkett revealed plans to strengthen the powers of Anti-social Behaviour Orders, despite criticism of their limited use to date. Ways of streamlining procedures and speeding up the process are to be examined, with the hope of encouraging their wider use...
The Government issued a consultation paper on the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) subsidy and rent restructuring, which proposes changes to the way HRA subsidy is calculated. These take account of the policy on rents for the social sector, which was announced on 13 December 2000...
The National Assembly of Wales sent consultation letters to local authorities and RSLs on possible further restrictions on the Right to Buy and the Right to Acquire in rural areas. The letter suggests a new list of rural areas in which restrictions can be imposed on the resale of homes acquired under the Right to Buy...
A pending test case, involving East Thames HG and Network HA, on the legality of rent notices that do not fully comply with the requirements of the Housing Act 1988 continued to attract interest. The National Housing Federation entered the debate and announced that it would be issuing a guidance note for RSLs facing potential payments to tenants because of incorrectly raising rents...
A consultation exercise was launched to question the future of the Rough Sleepers Unit. The Unit claims to be on target to achieve its objective of reducing the number of rough sleepers by at least two thirds by 2002...
A role-reversal exercise at Ealing LBC led to Director of Housing, Su Gomer, spending a day as an estate caretaker...
Norwich Council told tenants of a high-rise block to ignore its previous letter requesting them to remove window boxes. The Council had decided that there is no risk if boxes are properly secured...

One Year Ago

In July 2005 we were reporting:

Housing Benefit Minister, James Plaskitt, promised the Government will look at possible amendments to the Housing Benefit scheme, following the publication of a new research report. The research examined the impact of changes in 2001 to the single room rent restriction, which aimed to increase the amount of Housing Benefit that single people below the age of 25 and who were without children could claim to rent a room in a shared house. It found a widely held view that young people were being forced through the homelessness system to access accommodation and that the single room rent should be abolished...
The Housing Corporation launched its first Procurement Strategy to achieve greater efficiency in the supply of new affordable homes. Through the strategy, the Corporation plans to save £430 million to the public purse by 2008. If the Corporation achieves its target, the Procurement Strategy will deliver an extra 8,000 homes that would not otherwise have been built...
Shelter Cymru released a report that claimed Welsh local authorities were getting worse at dealing with homelessness. The report pointed to telephone advice and reception services provided by councils, which it argued provide a poorer service than in 2003...
The Government gave more details about its HomeBuy scheme, which has a target of helping around 100,000 households to own their own home by the year 2010 through simple, streamlined and more affordable routes. Under the proposals, there will be three HomeBuy products all based on the idea of equity sharing...
Derwent Living, which manages some 8,000 homes of which half are for social rent, launched the first ever UK property fund investing solely in student accommodation. Student accommodation currently represents 40% of the Association's business - just 9% below the Housing Corporation's limit for an association's percentage of non-core business turnover. Without the move, Derwent Living were set to exceed the limit within 18 months...
Nine organisations/consortia were invited to go on to the final stage of the Design for Manufacture competition. The competition, which is organised by English Partnerships, takes forward the Government's challenge to demonstrate that high quality homes can be designed for a construction cost of around £60,000. The nine finalists will now bid to develop homes on one or more of ten public sector-owned sites. A further seven entrants received a commendation for their entries...
The Welsh Assembly Government announced a package of measures aimed at helping local authorities provide more affordable housing. The measures include changes to planning policy and guidance to increase the quantity of affordable housing provided through the planning system. The package also includes an Affordable Housing Toolkit, which brings together in one reference document all the mechanisms available to local authorities and their partners to increase the supply of affordable housing...
Advertisements appeared in the European Journal, inviting organisations to bid to run the proposed new tenancy deposit schemes from October 2006. The schemes will offer protection for more than £740 million of assured shorthold tenancy deposits, currently held in England and Wales...

Section: Yesterday's News

Five Years Back

One Year Ago

Housing Monthly Diary

Reporting on July 2006

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