ROOF Blog

The government has confirmed its commitment that social homes are to be built to ‘lifetime homes standards’ by 2011, and all new build homes will meet the standard by 2013. The standards are a set of design features that ensure homes can be easily adapted as its occupants become older and less mobile. House builders had warned that the additional requirements were likely to reduce affordability. However, communities minister Baroness Andrews said she was ‘not persuaded’ that the plans needed to be watered down because of the decline in house building.

A scheme in Edinburgh which places the homeless in private flats and houses is to be expanded as the city struggles to meet demand for affordable housing. During the past three years around 1,500 homeless people have been housed in private accommodation with rents subsidised by the council’s private sector leasing (PSL) scheme. Statistics show that 42 per cent of households living in PSL households were working, compared with just 17 per cent of households in temporary accommodation. Housing groups have welcomed moves to expand the scheme, but say the longer-term goal is still affordable housing.

House builder Taylor Wimpey has laid off its entire national affordable housing team, Inside Housing reports. The six-strong team was made redundant before Christmas and a single ‘national partnering manager’ has been appointed in its place. It had been expected to build 3,000 affordable homes each year, but the slowdown in the housing market meant it recorded a £1.5 billion loss on the first half of 2008.

House builder Taylor Wimpey has laid off its entire national affordable housing team, Inside Housing reports. The six-strong team was made redundant before Christmas and a single ‘national partnering manager’ has been appointed in its place. It had been expected to build 3,000 affordable homes each year, but the slowdown in the housing market meant it recorded a £1.5 billion loss on the first half of 2008.

Gordon Brown is preparing to sweep planning controls in villages and market towns aside to allow the biggest rural house building programme for a generation. The government has concluded that protecting the environment should no longer be the overriding consideration when decisions are made in areas where locals are struggling to afford homes. Local authorities will be advised to earmark new building sites in towns where affordable housing is needed; use powers to overrule normal planning curbs in protected areas; provide incentives for farmers to sell land to developers; and create a generation of new communities on the outskirts of market towns.

There were more affordable homes created this year than in any year since 1996/7, the government said yesterday. Some 53,730 affordable homes were provided in England in 2007/8, an increase of 21 per cent from the previous year. More than 29,000 were made available for social rent, while just over 24,000 were provided through other intermediate housing schemes including shared ownership and shared equity schemes, the figures up 19 and 23 per cent respectively from the previous year. Eight out of nine regions experience an increase in new affordable housing supply, with only the North East showing a small decrease.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) whose aim is to take on the delivery of affordable homes and regenerating communities, and Tenants Services Authority (TSA), planned to safeguard standards for eight million social housing tenants, have been officially launched today. Top of the agenda for the two agencies is taking forward the government’s plans to respond to the current economic difficulties - including the way land is purchased, how investment is obtained and looking at ways unsold stock is converted into social housing.

The National Housing Federation (NHF) has called for a temporary ban on tenants buying social housing to help stop the slump in affordable housing stock. The NHF said that twice as many affordable homes had been sold off than had been built in England between 1999 and 2007, and added that affordable stock had fallen by an ‘unsustainable’ 300,000. Since 1999 the number of social houses fell from 4.3 million to 3.9 million, while the number of households on waiting lists had risen by 61 per cent to 1.61 million. A spokesperson for NHF said that one in 13 of every household in the country is on a waiting list for an affordable rented house, and this is likely to increase to one in ten. The government said it disagreed with the proposal as right to buy had helped thousands of households own their own homes.

Boris Johnson has pledged to help Londoners needing affordable housing and cut social housing waiting lists, in his £5 billion draft housing strategy being unveiled today. He said he would identify land belonging to the Greater London authority on which to build new houses, increase shared ownership schemes to help more people get on the property ladder and keep the target set out by Ken Livingstone to build 50,000 affordable homes within three years. Talking on Radio 4 he said that he wanted to remove the target that 50 per cent of all new developments built should be affordable, saying he wanted a more collaborative approach to working with the boroughs.