Minister Hits Out At UK Property Firms Over £200m Cladding Bailout

The behaviour of some of Britain’s biggest property owners has been criticised as morally indefensible by the government after ministers were forced to launch a £200m taxpayer bailout to fix combustible Grenfell-style cladding on private residential towers. James Brokenshire, the housing secretary, announced he was diverting public money to make safe about 20,000 high-rise homes, in an embarrassing defeat for the government after a months-long standoff with property firms where many refused to pay. Brokenshire’s plan immediately ran into internal opposition when Melanie Dawes, his most senior civil servant, said it was bad value for money for the taxpayer and regressively diverted money to richer parts of the population Read more on the Guardian website.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/may/09/minister-hits-out-uk-property-owners-cladding-bailout-grenfell

MP Slams New Scheme Aimed At Helping Slum Landlords

A new scheme designed to assist landlords with housing repairs has been slammed by a local MP. Writing in his column in the Peterborough Telegraph, Stewart Jackson MP took aim at Peterborough City Council’s initiative to deal with so-called slum landlords. The scheme plans to assist these landlords with housing repairs using £1.2m of public money from the capital budget. In his article, Jackson wrote: ‘Yes – these are landlords currently collecting rents for tenants already living in their substandard or dangerous properties – but who apparently cannot afford to repair and maintain their own properties properly or meet the appropriate regulatory and licensing arrangements.’ Mr Jackson said he thought it was a disgrace that landlords expect the taxpayer to foot the bill for these improvements. Read more on the Landlord News website.

Tory Hostility to Local Authorities Casts Long Shadow

Increasing supply is central to dealing with some acute problems facing the housing system.  Simple, but there are pressing questions which must be answered.  Who is going to pay? And how are they going to do it?  The CLG select committee addressed this issue in its recent report on housing finance, Financing of new housing supply . The report's premise is that austerity means there is no more public money for investment in housing, so the question is what else might be done. The report looks across the rental tenures and owner occupation. Some potentially innovative ways are identified, and some well-established themes are reprised. The overall conclusion is that there is no single solution. A range of measures is going to be necessary, and a primary task will be to involve institutional investors who have traditionally steered clear of residential property.  Download a copy of the report from the Parliament website.