Planning Permission Granted For Living Wage Housing

Conran and Partners have received planning approval for 104 new affordable homes to be built in Brighton and Hove to tackle the city’s housing crisis. The proposed 7-storey scheme represents the project in a series of innovative new housing developments which aim to tackle the housing crisis through the ‘Homes for Brighton & Hove’ initiative – a partnership between Brighton & Hove City Council and the Hyde Group – set up to create 1,000 new homes for rent and sale for lower-income, local working households in the city. The council-owned site will deliver 100% of the new homes as affordable. Read more on the PBCT website.

https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/planning-construction-news/planning-permission-brighton/63221/

Rent Increase Blow to Landlords

Housing experts are warning that landlords face a costs squeeze under the reformed social rent formula as a result of unprecedentedly low inflation rates. The consumer price index (CPI) for September has been set at a five-year low rate of 1.2%, falling from 1.5% the previous month. For 10 years from April 2015 landlords must use a formula of the September rate of CPI plus 1% to set rents, instead of the current formula of the retail price index (RPI), which was set at 2.3%, plus 0.5%. Because of the low CPI rate, landlords next year will only be able to increase rents by up to 2.2%, compared with 2.8% under the RPI-linked system. Experts said that the 0.6% gap between the two rent formulas was higher than most landlords had anticipated, and would force organisations to find efficiencies.  Read more on Inside Housing.