ROOF Blog

A new website - data.gov.uk - allows people to access 2,500 sets of official data, some of it never released before, from across Government departments. They include everything from crime rates, house prices and tidal predictions, to the numbers of people issued with antisocial behaviour orders living in people’s areas. Its creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with founding the internet 20 years ago, admitted the scale of the information available, which will eventually be searchable by postcode, will mean that social inequalities between different areas will quickly become apparent. There was a risk that some areas would seem like ‘ghettoes’ compared to others, he said, although this was not necessarily a bad thing as it would create pressure on politicians to spend money on improving the worse-off areas.

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.

The national homelessness charity Emmaus is marking the 60th anniversary of the Emmaus Movement by launching a campaign designed to allow the stories of homeless people to be heard. A newly launched website is asking people to tell their stories of significant moments in their lives and to add their voices to the stories already posted by the residents of Emmaus Communities. Contributors will receive a story in return and will play an important part in helping to make people who are often ignored to have a voice. The site has already attracted some high profile contributors such as Cherie Blair, Terry Waite and Fern Britton.

The locations of four new eco-towns were announced yesterday – Rackheath, Norfolk; north west Bicester, Oxfordshire; Whitehall Bordon, east Hampshire; and China Clay near St Austell in Cornwall. Communities and Local Government said the government would provide £60 million in funding to provide infrastructure to support the towns and a further £5 million would be made available for councils to work on proposals for a ‘second wave’ of six more towns. Construction is not expected to start until 2016.

Figures from Communities and Local Government show that house prices fell 12.5 per cent in May. London saw the biggest decline in England with prices falling 16.3 per cent, while Northern Ireland suffered the largest drop with prices down 23.2 per cent between April and May. Howard Archer, an economist at HIS Global Insight, said he believed a further decline of 10 per cent was possible.

Communities secretary John Denham has announced a £70 million migration impact fund, funded by a levy on migrants, that will be used to tackle illegal working practices and reduce local pressure on public services. Nearly 200 projects will receive funding with every region benefitting, but the amounts each receives will be weighted towards areas where migrants have had the greatest short-term impact. Funding in housing is being targeted on cracking down on rogue landlords.

The Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA) has claimed that designing eco-towns to be more inclusive would cost no more if it was factored into the planning process early on, and has produced guidance on how to it. It says that eco-towns should provide for all inhabitants regardless of age, disability, faith or gender, and avoid creating barriers that prevent them from becoming part of their communities. A spokesperson for TCPA said it was essential for each town to be socially as well as environmentally sustainable.

A new website has launched showing how people can work together to legally borrow empty properties from their owners and return them to use. The site shows how to get hold of and borrow the empty properties from the owners, and where to go for funding, how to arrange repairs and how to turn renovating a property into a training opportunity.

New research from the National Housing Federation reveals north England’s rural population has been ‘overlooked’ by policy makers, while facing the dual challenge of ‘staggeringly’ high house prices and ‘crippling’ low incomes. The research found that 86 per cent of the north’s most expensive house price districts are predominantly rural and almost 66 per cent of England’s most deprived rural areas are in the north. The federation has called for the government to create a ‘northern rural way initiative’ to combat the current economic crisis.

The Tenant Services Authority is offering social landlords small grants to help them develop ‘local deals’ with their tenants. Grants up to £9,000 will be made available to housing associations, councils and arm’s length management organisations to improve services in response to local needs.