‘House Prices Are Set To Soar Despite Economic Uncertainty’

Uk house prices have been predicted to rise by more than six per cent in the next five years, bringing the average property value to almost £300,000, according to new research. The growth has been forecast by Barclays, which predicts the UK property market will remain buoyant with prices set to rise by an average of 6.1 per cent by 2021, despite the current uncertain economic and political climate. The Barclays UK Property Predictor used factors including rental trends, employment levels and commuter behaviour, as well as current house prices to create an index of property hotspots. Read more on the Yorkshire Post website.

Welfare Cap Would Decimate Women’s Refuges

More than two-thirds of refuges for victims of domestic abuse in England and Wales will close unless these lifeline services are made exempt from a new government welfare spending cap. Actress and Women’s Aid patron Julie Walters made the claim and highlighted how refuges save lives as the charity’s chief executive pleaded with ministers to reconsider the proposal. Women’s Aid said a planned blanket cap on housing benefit will “decimate” refuges for women fleeing domestic abuse. Mrs Walters, said the Government must exempt refuges from the cuts “or live with the consequences of more women being killed”.  Read more on the Yorkshire Post website.

Councils’ Leader Calls for Powers to Tackle the Housing Shortage

Ministers have been told they will fail to deliver on promises to build thousands of new unless to give councils greater freedoms over skills. The chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA) said a dramatic fall in the number of people completing construction apprenticeships makes the target of 275,000 new affordable homes by 2020 almost impossible to achieve. Coun Gary Porter called for councils to be given control over how money is spent on skills so that it can be used to meet the needs of local businesses. He said: “The Government has expressed a clear ambition to build more affordable homes. Central to this is lifting housing borrowing limits to allow us to invest in new housing, giving us the freedom to set Right to Buy discounts and retain 100 per cent of the receipts locally.” Read more on the Yorkshire Post website.

Generation Renters Believe It Is ‘Virtually Impossible’ To Get Onto Housing Ladder

More than one in five people who are not on the property ladder believe it is “virtually impossible” to get a mortgage, a major new study has revealed. The largest research project of its kind in the UK highlights the divide between the haves and have-nots in Britain’s housing market. It shows the polarising effect of home ownership; 57 per cent of parents who own a property have or plan to help their children with their deposit, compared to 24 per cent of parents who rent, underlining the importance of property ownership for the prosperity of future generations. The report found that 21 per cent of prospective first-time buyers believe it is virtually impossible to obtain a mortgage, compared to 12 per cent of parents. Read more on the Yorkshire Post website.

Cable Demands Action to Tackle London Housing Bubble

Vince Cable has called for action to tackle the overheating London housing market, warning that a premature rise in interest rates will hit the recovery in manufacturing and exports in the North of England. The Liberal Democrat MP told The Yorkshire Post that the housing bubble in the capital needs to be deflated. Mr Cable said: “The risk is that if you continue to get this runaway boom in house prices in the South East and particularly London then the Bank of England is tempted to put up interest rates sooner than they otherwise would do and that in turn pushes up the exchange rate and ​that makes it difficult for people to export. That’s the worry and that’s why the boil has got to be lanced.” Read more on the Yorkshire Post website.

Minister: “Homes Scheme ‘Incoherent and Unfair’”

A flagship coalition policy which the Government claims will boost housebuilding in Britain is “incoherent” and “unfair” and should be scrapped, the Minister responsible has admitted. In unguarded comments at the Liberal Democrat conference in York, Local Government Minister Stephen Williams admitted the ‘New Homes Bonus’ has no real impact on the number of new homes being built in Britain.  Amongst a raft of criticisms of his department , Mr Williams branded another key policy – preventing authorities from raising council tax by more than two per cent – as “absurd”. Damningly for the Government, the Minister also admitted the smallest councils will “undoubtedly” face “severe financial difficulty” over the next few years due to the cuts handed out by his own department, raising questions about their “viability”. Read more on the Yorkshire Post website.

IDS Rules out Regional Benefit Cap

Iain Duncan Smith has dismissed the possibility of introducing a new regional cap on benefits that could have seen payments to families in many parts of Yorkshire slashed further. He admitted that the benefit cap was hitting few people in areas of the country where housing costs are relatively low. But he indicated it would simply be too “complicated” to introduce different caps for different parts of the country, due to the huge differences in housing benefit claims even within regions such as Yorkshire. “The trouble is, where should regional calculations be made?” Mr Duncan Smith asked. “Cities in regions have different levels of income from some of the countryside. It starts to become quite a complicated process.” Read more on the Yorkshire Post website.