26 Towns In England To Receive £610m In Government Funding

Twenty-six English towns have received a portion of £610 million in government funding to help them rebuild their economies in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The money, which comes from the £3.6 billion Towns Fund unveiled in July 2019, is intended to kickstart urban regeneration and boost green transport infrastructure, tourism and jobs. It is also intended for education and vocational training courses, the MHCLG said. The cash was allocated through a series of “towns deals” which sets out how the money will be spent following proposals submitted by the local council. Read more on the ITV website.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-06-08/covid-26-towns-in-england-to-receive-610m-in-government-funding-to-rebuild-after-pandemic

Housing: Regeneration – Parliamentary Written Answer

Grahame Morris: To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will create a fund for local authorities and housing associations to invest in the regeneration of existing housing stock.

Kit Malthouse: The Autumn Budget 2017 announced additional funding of £400 million recoverable loan finance for estate regeneration schemes. A fund of £290 million of recoverable loan has previously been made available. Also, in March 2017 we allocated £32 million of grant to 105 estates. The priorities for the programme are to:

• support the creation of additional, high-quality housing by enabling the densification of estates (where appropriate) through the better use of space and design;

• create better places to help tackle the social disadvantage and deprivation associated with many existing estates.

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/written-questions-answers-statements/written-question/Commons/2019-01-04/205255

£1 Billion Housing Delivery Fund Launched

Housing Secretary James Brokenshire has announced a partnership with Barclays Bank to provide £1 billion of loan finance to help support small and medium sized developers, speeding up the delivery of thousands of new homes. Support, ranging between £5 million to £100 million, will be available to developers who are able to demonstrate experience and commitment to building excellent new homes, with a track record of delivering challenging projects on time and to target. The Housing Delivery Fund will support the delivery of new homes, including social housing, retirement living and apartments for rent, whilst also encouraging greater innovation on how housing is delivered such as brownfield land and urban regeneration projects. Read more on the Homes England website.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/1-billion-housing-delivery-fund-launched-by-brokenshire-in-partnership-with-barclays

London Assembly Votes For Tenant Ballots On Estate Regeneration

The motion urges mayor of London Sadiq Khan to recommend that ballots are used on all schemes where demolition is an option in the final version of his ‘Good Practice Guide to Regeneration’. The vote does not mean that this recommendation will be included in Mr Khan’s regeneration guide as the mayor will still have the final say. However, the support of Labour and the unanimous vote places pressure on the mayor to follow the opinion of the assembly. Read more on the London Assembly website.

Autumn Budget Update - Housing

·         100% council tax premium on empty properties.

·         Stamp duty abolished for first-time buyers for homes worth up to £300,000

·         £28m in three new housing pilot schemes – in the West Midlands, Manchester and Liverpool – to halve rough-sleeping by 2022 and eliminate it by 2027.

·         £44bn of capital funding to help build 300,000 homes annually by mid-2020s.

·         New money for home builders fund.

·         £630m ‘small sites fund’.

·         £8bn of financial guarantees to support private housebuilding.

·         £2.7bn housing infrastructure fund.

·         £1.1bn for new urban regeneration.

·         £34m to train construction workers.

·         A review to be chaired by Oliver Letwin to look at ways to speed up planning permission.

·         Five new garden towns.

·         One million new homes on the Cambridge-Milton Keynes-Oxford corridor by 2050.

Read more on the Guardian website.

£65 Million Government Support For UK's Largest Build To Rent Site

The biggest development of homes built specifically for private rent in the UK is set to receive a £65 million boost from the government, Housing Minister Alok Sharma has announced. The deal will help to unlock over 7,600 new, high quality homes at the Wembley Park development in Brent, London – one of the largest strategic regeneration projects in the country. At least 6,800 of these homes will be for rent. It will offer more choice for Londoners and comes as the government confirmed widespread support for its proposals to open up the choice of rental properties on the market, to help those currently priced out. Read more on the GovUK website.

Housing Estates: Regeneration – Parliamentary Written Answer

Tim Farron:  To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with reference to the Answer of 8 March 2016 to Question 29619, how much of the £140 million fund relating to the redevelopment of 100 sink estates has been allocated to date.

Gavin Barwell: The £140million Estate Regeneration Fund was launched on 8 December 2016 alongside the publication of the Estate Regeneration National Strategy. Following extensive engagement with over 120 schemes around the country, an additional £32m of enabling and capacity building grant was made available. Initial registrations for the £140m recoverable investment funding have already been received and funding allocations will be announced when the assessment process is completed. Allocations for the £32m grant funding will be made in the current financial year.

Homelessness 'Will Rocket' Due To The Housing Bill

Councils fear the housing bill will see a sell off of homes that will not be replaced and a rocketing of homelessness in communities across Britain. The survey of local authorities, treated as a snapshot by the LGA laid out their concerns. The key statistics from this survey are:

-          78% said there would be an increase in homelessness

-          90% of councils surveyed said their number of council homes would decrease

-          74% said the homes sold under RTB would not be replaced

-          82% said there would be less estate regeneration

Read more on 24dash.

Housing Estates: Regeneration – Parliamentary Written Answer

Lord Kennedy of Southwark: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what budgets and programmes have been established since 2014 to help the regeneration of council housing estates.  

Baroness Williams of Trafford: A total of £290 million of loan funding has been allocated by the Government to help the regeneration of local authority housing estates. The first tranche of this funding was announced jointly between the Greater London Authority and the Department for Communities and Local Government on 13 June 2014, and the second was announced by the my rt. hon. Friend, the Prime Minister on 11 January 2016.

Heseltine Launches Panel Of Experts To Kick-Start Estates Regeneration

New tenants rights will be at the heart of the regeneration of some of the country’s most deprived estates, according to Lord Heseltine. A panel  will look at how the layout of estates can be best used to deliver more quality homes that people can buy and rent. The experts will also ensure that there are strong protections in place for existing residents so they will always be given the right to return to their communities. The 17-strong group, co-chaired by Lord Heseltine and Housing Minister Brandon Lewis and reporting to the Prime Minister and Communities Secretary Greg Clark, will develop a national estate regeneration strategy and work with up to 100 estates to tackle deprivation and transform them into vibrant communities. Read more on the CLG website.

Housing Estates – Parliamentary Written Answer

Simon Danczuk: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with reference to the press release of 10 January 2016 entitled, Prime Minister pledges to transform sink estates, if he will make an assessment of the value of house prices on those estates planned for removal or regeneration.

Brandon Lewis: The new Estate Regeneration Advisory Panel will be starting its work shortly, and will be seeking representations from as many estates as possible. The Panel will evaluate the potential for the regeneration of particular estates over the coming months, and will report by this year’s Autumn Statement. Any estates proposed for regeneration will need to take into account the value of properties and development viability considerations.

Cameron Makes A Great Case For Abolishing Bedroom Tax

The final government report into the removal of the spare room subsidy, the policy known as the bedroom tax, was released on the last day of parliamentary business in 2015. It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what everyone, from David Orr to Sajid Javid has known all along: By the criteria against which the policy was drawn up, it is an unmitigated disaster.  Let's put aside the Prime Minister's new, shiny and bellicose statement of intent to literally destroy social housing by tearing it down and replacing it with something else. Frankly there are no policy details in the sink-estate clearance proposal, despite him setting out his slightly rabid ideological stall. All we can really be sure of is that either the physical regeneration will never come to pass, or it will leave in its wake a lot of “unintended consequences” that will be widely publicised but never heard. Read more on 24dash.

Can Cameron’s Council Estate Plan Work?

David Cameron is on a blitz of housing policy announcements at the moment. First we had an idea for the direct commissioning of new homes, now we have plans for regenerating 100 council estates. Knocking down and rebuilding peoples’ homes is obviously always going to be controversial. But that doesn’t mean it is always wrong. If the hard work is done to win the support of estate residents, and more affordable homes get built as a result, it can be really positive. And where estates are old and run down it can be positively essential to invest in renewal or replacement. As we see it, Cameron’s regeneration proposals have two clear advantages:

·         You could get a lot more homes into London through council estate regeneration.

·         Second, the ‘Complete Streets’ approach the government is backing has real merits.

Read more on the Shelter blog.

Savills: Regen Model Could Create 360k Homes

Up to 360,000 extra homes could be created in London by redeveloping council estates to a higher density along street patterns, according to a government-commissioned report, Completing London’s Streets, carried out by consultancy Savills. The report compares a conventional approach to estate renewal, under which estates are replaced with new high-rise blocks, to an alternative ‘complete streets’ model. Under ‘complete streets’ estates are re-built in a street-based pattern. Savills estimates 1,750 hectares of London’s 8,500 council housing estates could be capable of ‘complete streets’ regeneration, leading to an increase in the number of existing homes of between 54,000 and 360,000. The modelling, carried out for the Cabinet Office, was based on a detailed study of six estates in London. Download the report from Savills website.

Council Plans To Strip Tenants Of Right To Buy

Lambeth Council has angered its residents and ministers by pledging to strip tenants of the Right to Buy when their homes are replaced during its largest-ever estate regeneration programme. The Labour-led south London authority has unveiled plans to shift tenants with ‘secure’ council tenancies to an ‘enhanced’ form of ‘assured lifetime’ tenancy when they move into replacement homes. According to council papers, the new tenancy will match those offered by councils “as closely as possible”. In addition to losing the Right to Buy, the new tenancy will exclude the ‘Right to Manage’, which allows tenants to take over the running of their homes and the ‘Right to Transfer’, used to trigger the transfer of homes to a housing association. Residents will also cease to be tenants of Lambeth Council once their homes are replaced. It is understood the social housing rent cut is therefore also unlikely to apply to HfL stock. Read more on Inside Housing.

Clark Confirms Housing Associations Will Be Able To Keep Right To Buy ‘Cash’

Greg Clark has confirmed that housing associations will be able to keep money raised through Right to Buy at a debate on regeneration hosted by The Hyde Group. Mr Clark told an audience of senior housing industry leaders that housing associations would keep the receipts in ‘cash’ rather than grant form. He said that the entire UK housing industry had a responsibility to work in partnership to solve the housing crisis and he promised to give housing associations an ‘enriched’ role. He told the audience that housing associations had a ‘standing army’ of developers with the energy and expertise to deliver major building projects, as well as the care, sensitivity and local knowledge to look after existing tenants and keep local communities on side. Read more on the Hyde Group website.

Council 'Cannot Stop' Earls Court Regeneration

A council has admitted it is unable to stop the demolition of two council estates, set to be knocked down to make way for a divisive £12bn regeneration scheme. Hammersmith and Fulham Council wrote to residents earlier this month explaining it believes the demolition of West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates cannot be stopped. The redevelopment was agreed by the previous Conservative administration, and the local Labour party promised to re-negotiate the deal in its manifesto for local elections last May. But it has now concluded a legal sale of the land was completed in November 2013, leaving it powerless to stop the demolition. Read more on Inside Housing.

Tenants Serve Transfer Notice on Council

Council tenants on two estates facing demolition have served notice of plans to transfer the homes into community ownership, as they seek to halt a controversial £8bn regeneration scheme. The regeneration of the area surrounding the Earls Court Exhibition Centre by developer Capco has been opposed by residents of nearby West Kensington and Gibbs Green estates since it was first approved in 2011. The tenants have notified the council of their intention to transfer the homes into community ownership under Section 34 of the Housing Act. The legislation forces councils to cooperate with tenants’ stock transfer requests. However, under the rules, the council can object to ministers if it “can show clear evidence of a significant detrimental effect on the local authority’s ability to provide housing”. Read more on Inside Housing.

Chorus of Disapproval Builds Over Government's Right to Buy Extension

The British Property Federation has joined the ever-growing number of dissenting voices speaking out against the government's plans to extend the right to buy to housing associations. The Federation, described as the "single most important voice" of the UK's property industry, issued a statement denouncing the new RTB. The BPF believes the extension of the right to buy would "further reduce the supply of affordable housing, as it will limit the amount of finance housing associations can generate to fund and build new homes". It added that this could have a "negative impact on housing associations’ ability to invest in estate renewal and so would make it harder to get urban regeneration schemes underway". Read more on 24dash.

Tory Election Majority Means Housing Market ‘Dodged a Bullet’

A Mortgage Strategy poll of more than 900 readers at the end of April highlighted the mortgage industry’s overwhelming support for the Tories. There were concerns about Labour’s plans to introduce three-year tenancy agreements as standard and cap rent rises at inflation. They also pledged to scrap stamp duty for first-time buyers on homes worth less than £300,000, which critics suggested would boost demand but not increase supply.  Labour also pledged to build 200,000 homes a year by the end of the next parliament.  The Tories promised to expand Right to Buy to 1.3 million housing association tenants and introduce a Help to Buy Isa to help borrowers save for a deposit. It also pledged to build 200,000 homes for first-time buyers aged under 40 at 20 per cent discount and create a £1bn brownfield regeneration fund to unlock sites for 400,000 homes. Read more on the Mortgage Strategy website.