Last week saw Homes for Reading, a new ‘socially responsible housing company’ welcome its first tenants. The company is the latest in a line of wholly owned council businesses. The intention behind Homes for Reading is to establish a commercially successful, socially responsible landlord in Reading in a …

Slough Council has announced an audacious bid to meet its housing numbers by proposing a new settlement of 10,000 homes in South Bucks District Council. Needless to say, South Bucks has opposed the plan. Like a number of other urban unitary authorities with tightly drawn boundaries (think Stevenage, Luton etc) …

Against a backdrop of a downbeat party, an opposition riding high in the polls, Boris, and a nasty cough, this was never going to be an easy speech for Theresa May. And it wasn’t. In the run up to the conference, when the Tories are traditionally rallying around demonstrating why …

A boost for housing The Department for Communities and Local Government has attempted a bold new step in addressing our housing crisis. A new formula to calculate housing targets means that 150 local authorities across the UK have seen their housing targets increase by as much as 35 percent.   …

  Gove announces that the UK will ban all petrol and diesel cars by 2040 Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, has announced plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK roads by 2040, in a bid to meet challenging emissions targets. Gove explained that …

  After several false starts, the DCLG’s ‘Land Release’ fund announced in the Housing White Paper has opened for bids. Operated as a partnership of the DCLG, the Cabinet Office and the Local Government Association’s One Public Estate programme, the fund will be used to help councils overcome barriers to …

Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has announced today radical new proposals to crack down on the use of controversial leaseholds in new-build homes. Leaseholds have previously been used for flats with shared communal areas however the number of houses sold as leaseholds has increased significantly in recent years. In many of …

A year on from Brexit A year on from the infamous referendum we know that “Brexit means Brexit” but precious little else. All that is certain is that discussions started in June and have to finish by March 2019. Prior to the General Election Theresa May pledged to carry out …