tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-233391442024-03-17T07:40:14.056+00:00Unlocking the Potential of Empty HomesFor every two families that need a home there is one property standing empty. This isn't just inefficient it's unjustDavidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.comBlogger238125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-89060270066538050442013-07-25T12:34:00.000+01:002013-07-25T12:38:00.970+01:00Why Pickles Has Suspended Welsh Streets Demolition The Mayor and Liverpool City councillors are cursing Eric Pickles for
s<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-23431023">uspending their decision to demolish the Welsh Streets</a>. Pickles won’t
care about their curses of course, the fact that this is the third time
ministers have directly intervened in this decade long saga might say
something about ministers commitment to localism, but it also says a lot
about the way this case has been handled by the council too.<br />
<br />
The council like to paint opposition to the Welsh Streets demolition
as outside interference by heritage zealots, but they understate the
case. No housing scheme in England has proved more controversial or more
divisive, and few can have been as eye wateringly expensive. Whatever
you might say about Pickles he is no heritage zealot. The truth is he
has plenty of other reasons for questioning the decisions made in this
case:<br />
<br />
He may well feel that the scheme fails to meet housing need.
Demolishing 439 houses and building perhaps as few as 153 is a huge loss
of the city's housing capacity. A city with a growing population
shouldn't be settling for less. Less housing means fewer homes for
people. With household sizes in Liverpool getting smaller and housing
association rents rising, demand for larger houses is in decline, small
houses are what the city needs. Old terraces may be unfashionable but
they provide good homes for people on modest incomes. Without them more
people, unable to buy homes, become reliant on social housing.<br />
<br />
Pickles may think the scheme fails to promote economic growth. A
drop in housing capacity means local services and shops struggle, and
people have to drive elsewhere to get the services they need. In a city
that should be striving for growth this scheme is the opposite - managed
decline.<br />
<br />
He may wonder what the scheme has done to the community. Over the
last ten years 1200 residents have been lured or driven away. The
council may claim community support for demolition now, but the truth is
after a decade of attrition there is hardly anybody left to oppose it
now. <br />
He no doubt thinks the scheme is incredibly inefficient. When you
add up all the public subsidy this scheme has absorbed over the last ten
years it totals £35million. A sum of money that could have easily have
paid outright for building twice as many new houses on some of the
city’s many vacant plots of land, or a programme of refurbishing 1,000
of its empty homes.<br />
<br />
Perhaps he will also pause for thought over what caused the problem
this scheme seeks to fix. The Welsh Streets were never a wealthy part of
the city, but they were home to a functioning community that was far
from being in decline. The Welsh Street's demise was artificial,
calculated and imposed from above. The last government's ruinous
pathfinder programme paid councils vast amounts of money to buy up and
demolish old houses.<br />
<br />
Nowhere greeted this policy with more eagerness than Liverpool
council. Even the minister in charge at the time, John Prescott thought
the council's enthusiasm for demolition was obsessive. <a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/development/fighting-his-corner/6520733.article">"They knocked the whole bloody lot down so you had bomb sites everywhere"</a> he said. The
huge scale of Liverpool's demolition programme was far beyond its
capacity to deliver and the Welsh Streets are a victim and a legacy of
that excess.<br />
<br />
Much has changed in the decade since this scheme was first imposed
on the Welsh Streets, but the scheme itself has remained rigidly
unaltered. To the council’s credit it has, in recent months, sought some
more imaginative solutions for dealing with empty homes, but it refused
to consider them here.<br />
Its unwillingness to compromise has left a scheme that, if
unaltered, would manage the decline of a large community into a small
social housing estate. With Pickles picking up the tab, there can be
little wonder as to why he is questioning it. Liverpool Council and Plus
Dane Housing Association should use this opportunity to fix this flawed
scheme, not in order to placate Pickles, but because the people of
Liverpool deserve no less. <br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">
<br />
This artile was first published in the <a href="http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2013/07/25/localism-vs-centralism-what-fascination-do-liverpool-s-welsh-streets-hold-for-the-government-99623-33651648/#sitelife-commentsWidget-bottom">Liverpool Daily Post </a></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-22179451304718528932013-07-25T11:45:00.003+01:002013-07-25T11:45:24.715+01:00Demolishing the Welsh Streets <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Liverpool council’s <a href="http://Liverpool council’s planning committee decision to demolish most of the Welsh Streets and replace it with a far smaller number of larger suburban housing association homes is the latest chapter in the managed decline of one of Britain’s great cities In its favour at least it is a decison, after virtually a decade of blight and systematic winding down there is some clarity about how the council wants the empty Welsh Streets dealt with. It’s a relief that the council has been induced into retaining and repairing some of the houses including the well maintained occupied houses in Kelvin Grove and Ringo Starr’s birthplace in Madryn Street. Quite how the council even contemplated destroying this part of its heritage is beyond belief. But the council approved planis still controversial and divisive and the long process has strained the community. Although some action is better than none, the plans are very far from ideal. Whilst new housing, particularly affordable housing should be welcomed, it has come at the expense of a big net loss of housing capacity to the city. A city with a growing population shouldn’t be settling for less. Less housing means fewer homes for people. It means local services and shops struggle to function, and people will have to drive elsewhere to get the services they need. With household sizes in Liverpool getting smaller and housing association rents rising, demand for larger houses is in decline, small houses are what the city needs. Old terraces may be unfashionable but they provide good homes for people on modest incomes. Without them more people, unable to buy homes, become reliant on social housing The vision of this scheme is suburbia in the city with car culture replacing local services, Mono-tenure Housing association ownership replacing diverse ownership. Of course many people do want new homes, but why the council couldn’t have commissioned Plus Dane Housing association to build them on one of the city’s many vacant sites, instead of making them dependent on demolition is unclear. The effect of this is to give the few remaining residents the false choice of supporting demolition and getting a new house or stay living in a ghost town. To its credit, the council has in recent months sought some more imaginative solutions for dealing with empty homes, but it refused to consider them here. If the sad story of the Welsh Streets is destined to be a chapter in the ideology of managed decline, let’s hope it’s the last one.">planning committee decision </a>to demolish most of the Welsh Streets and replace it with a far smaller number of larger suburban housing association homes is the latest chapter in the managed decline of one of Britain’s great cities<br /><br />In its favour at least it is a decison. After virtually a decade of blight and systematic winding down there is now some clarity about how the council wants the empty Welsh Streets dealt with. It’s a relief that the council has been<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-18441277"> induced into retaining and repairing some of the houses</a> including the well maintained occupied houses in Kelvin Grove and Ringo Starr’s birthplace in Madryn Street. Quite how the council even contemplated destroying this part of its heritage is beyond belief. <br />But the council approved plan is still controversial and divisive and the long process has strained the community. <br /><br />Although some action is better than none, the plans are very far from ideal. Whilst new housing, particularly affordable housing should be welcomed, it has come at the expense of a big net loss of housing capacity to the city. A <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/liverpools-population-stands-466400-after-3339897">city with a growing population</a> shouldn’t be settling for less. Less housing means fewer homes for people. It means local services and shops struggle to function, and people will have to drive elsewhere to get the services they need.<br /><br />With <a href="http://liverpool.gov.uk/council/key-statistics-and-data/census/census-background/">household sizes in Liverpool getting smaller</a> and housing association <a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/tenancies/tenants-facing-rent-hike-as-inflation-rises/6518470.article">rents rising</a>, demand for larger houses is in decline, small houses are what the city needs. Old terraces may be unfashionable but they provide good homes for people on modest incomes. Without them more people, unable to buy homes, become reliant on social housing <br /><br />The vision of this scheme is suburbia in the city with car culture replacing local services, Mono-tenure Housing association ownership replacing diverse ownership.<br /><br />Of course many people do want new homes, but why the council couldn’t have commissioned Plus Dane (the housing association who stand to develop the houses here) to build them on one of the city’s many vacant sites, instead of making them dependent on demolition is unclear. <br />The effect of this is to give the few remaining residents the false choice of supporting demolition and getting a new house or stay living in a ghost town. <br /><br />To its credit, the council has in recent months sought some <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/big-demand-liverpool-councils-1-3323001">more imaginative solutions</a> for dealing with empty homes, but it refused to consider them here. If the sad story of the Welsh Streets is destined to be a chapter in the ideology of managed decline, let’s hope it’s the last one.<br /><span style="background: white; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.5pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com41tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-18819193875997002162013-05-03T09:01:00.003+01:002013-05-03T09:01:52.687+01:00My Article in this month's RICS magazine MODUSWhatever else you might heave heard; this much is true; bringing empty homes into use won’t solve the housing supply crisis by itself. But that’s no reason not do it. It’s equally clear that the current rate of house-building isn’t going to solve it either. So we need to think more broadly about increasing housing supply. <br />Today there are almost 350,000 long-term empty homes in Britain, (and that’s only the ones we know about). In fact, as a nation, if we could be just a little bit more efficient and make sure no home in Britain stayed empty for more than six months, an additional one million people could be housed before we built any more houses at all.<br />
<br />This isn’t a huge ask, and everybody concerned would better off as a result. Owners will benefit from better use of their property, councils will receive additional income and most importantly thousands of families will get a better place to live. With a new government grant scheme, and the National Empty Homes Loans Scheme about to be launched, there has perhaps never been a better time to make this happen. <br />So what needs to be done? Here are four simple steps:<br />Whenever property owners anticipate that their property will be vacant for more than 6 months they should make it available to people as short life housing or let it to property guardian companies. A large range of companies and housing cooperatives provide this service. The government should encourage this by offering incentives through the council tax system. <br />Property owners should take advantage of the grants and loans and get their empty stock renovated. Housing associations, councils and community groups should offer to help them with renovation and management.<br /><br />Councils must provide help and encouragement to property owners and where necessary take enforcement action. This happens in many places, but still too many councils don’t give it enough priority. They can’t afford it you might say. But they can. A proper plan for bringing homes into use is actually an income earning activity for councils in England and Wales through the New Homes Bonus. If councils reinvest the new homes bonus income they receive for empty homes into measures to bring more homes into use, council’s impact will be transformed.<br /><br />The government should show leadership and get publicly owned properties (including those owned councils and housing associations) into use. There have been improvements in the vacancy rate of publicly owned homes, but it still isn’t good enough. The problem is that there is little scrutiny on public landlords and no real power for local people to put pressure on them .The one right people have is the toothless Community Right to Reclaim Land. This should be beefed up so that the people have a right to buy or rent publicly owned homes that have been left empty for more than 6 months<br />These steps would cost little more than the money that has already been committed, and could create thousands more homes with no obvious downside. Of course this won’t solve the housing supply crisis by itself, but it’s not a bad place to start. <br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-35015503361449744252013-03-08T11:50:00.001+00:002013-03-08T11:53:28.026+00:00empty homes to drop to zero next year<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--> <br />
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The number of empty homes in England is set to drop to zero next year. This may sound improbable, but if you follow current projections of house building rates and household formations it must be true. </div>
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<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/household-projections-2008-to-2033-in-england">Government projections</a> show the number of households in England growing to 27.5 million by 2033. In 2011, the year of the last census, the official statistics showed <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-286262">a surplus of 750,000</a> dwellings. In other words there were three quarters of a million more homes than households. This neatly coincides with the official <a href="http://www.emptyhomes.com/statistics-2/">number of empty homes</a> that year. </div>
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But the population is growing fast and as we are often told, <a href="http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/why_we_campaign/building_more_homes">house-building rates are not keeping up.</a> In fact if we were to assume that house building carried on at it’s current rate for next few years (and there is no obvious reason to think that anything else will happen) the surplus will reduce to 200,000 this year and disappear altogether in about November next year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This scenario would have many effects including me being out of a job! </div>
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But this surely cannot be true. If it were, work would already be underway on every single empty building in England. A glance out of my window here towards the <a href="http://unlockingthepotential.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/building-houses-on-old-kent-road.html">Heygate estate</a> would indicate this is very definitely not the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, although the numbers of empty homes are linked to housing demand, the effect is quite slow. Empty homes are what economists call an inelastic supply. This means where there is a high level of demand for homes the number of empty ones will reduce, but not by anything like enough to meet all of the demand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The number of empty homes has indeed decreased in recent years, but never by more than 20,000 in a single year. </div>
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There is an old adage that all models are wrong, but some models are useful. As such, the apparent empty homes conundrum will probably be solved when we find out the government household projections were incorrect. If for example, the number of single person households turns to grow at half the rate that the projection indicates, the current housebuilding rate is just right and there will be no shortfall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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This all goes to show that we shouldn’t get too bogged down in statistics. We all know that real people are facing real housing problems (most of them linked to housing being too expensive). It’s self evident that getting empty homes into use is a useful thing to do in these circumstances but won’t solve all of the problems. Its also certain that it won't work the other way either. I predict another significant drop in empty homes numbers this year, but I would bet my job on it not droppping to anything like zero next year. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br />
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Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-46737666130157582742013-01-09T19:10:00.000+00:002013-01-10T17:03:45.432+00:00Where are they now? The abandoned backdrops to 80's videos<br />
Empty buildings seemed to be a common backdrop for music videos in the 1980s. So I thought it would be interesting to look at a few and see what's happened to the buildings now.<br />
<br />
The video for the Human League's Fascination was filmed on the empty streets of Plaistow in East London in 1983. The area was then under the control of the Docklands Development Corporation a QUANGO tasked with regenerating London’s Docklands. The Victorian houses had been emptied out by the corporation prior to demolition. As the video starts we see a map of the area with an orange blob indicating “You are Here” As the camera moves in it turns into an ariel view, and it becomes apparent that area covered by the blob really had been painted orange. In fact to make the video, a whole house (No.1 First Avenue), the immediate area of the streets, and an old Austin 1800 car parked outside really were covered in orange paint. The house along with the rest of the houses in the street were demolished a couple of weeks later. Some rather anonymous 1980s semis were built in their place and stand there today. Unfortunately the identikit semis couldn't fit in the triangular shape of the corner plot and so the site of No.1 remains vacant to this day.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QqqBs6kkzHE?rel=0" width="420"></iframe>
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Is there a better one than this? The Smiths (or rather Morrissey and a group of lookalikes) cycling through the New Barracks Estate in Salford in 1985. The estate is one of the earliest council estates in the country, built with private patronage in the early twentieth century. Even in its rather forlorn state in the 1980s you can see the quality of the architecture and the layout. The Salford Lads club which appears about half way through is still going strong, and the big houses in the magnificent Regent Square which we see towards the end of the video were renovated, some of the other boarded up houses were demolished and new houses are standing there now. OK I think this video was actually made for "Stop Me if You Think You've Heard this Before" But this song is even more sublime.<br />
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Not from the 1980s, but Coldplay's Every Teardrop is a Waterfall, was filmed in the vast abandoned Millennium mills building in West Silvertown in East London. This incredible 10 storey art-deco mill was once Splillers' biggest flour mill, but with the closure of the Royal Docks the mill closed in 1981. It has remained empty ever since. In the 1990s it was briefly considered as a site for a huge aquarium for the Zoological Society of London. As recently as 2009 it was going to be converted into 400 flats under an interesting Terry Farrell scheme. As far as I'm aware there are no current proposals on the table. The mills were also the location for the video for the Arctic Monkeys excellent single "Fluorescent Adult", which regrettably, I deem a bit violent for this blog.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fyMhvkC3A84?rel=0" width="560"></iframe>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-77762904697801439832012-12-12T13:39:00.000+00:002012-12-12T17:12:18.803+00:00Big house builders, Less houses, more profit You know the argument so I won’t dwell on it. But we need more homes and yet we’re building less. <a href="http://unlockingthepotential.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/dont-build-more-homes.html">I have argued before</a> that the real problem is affordability not supply, but the government certainly does accept the need to build more. It has been keen to help by creating guarantees and grants and relief from regulation to make it easier for more homes to be built. Its recent initiatives to help house builders include: <br />
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<ul>
<li>£20 billion housing guarantee plan</li>
<li>£225 million to support large-scale housing sites</li>
<li>New buy scheme providing subsidy to allow 95% mortgages on new build homes</li>
<li>A holiday for house builders from their obligations to build social housing as part of large housing developments</li>
<li>Requirement for all new homes to be zero carbon by 2016 watered down.</li>
</ul>
<br />
So is there any sign that this vast amount of public support for the house building industry is working? Nope. The <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/7601/2200081.pdf">latest government statistics </a>show that house building is actually in further decline, with housing completions down 6% and housing starts down 10%. The industry is unapologetic and is <a href="http://www.hbf.co.uk/media-centre/news/view/economy-needs-bold-government-action-to-spark-house-building-boost/">asking for yet more help</a> inviting the chancellor to "refine and expand" the measures he's already introduced.<br />
So how have the big builders faired during this (apparently) most difficult of periods? Here is the latest profit news from the UK’s ten biggest house builders:<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Barretts <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19567905">profits up 159% to £111m</a> </li>
<li>Taylor Wimpey p<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/9444416/House-prices-fall-but-housebuilder-Taylor-Wimpey-sees-profits-soar.html">rofits up 135% to £78.2m</a></li>
<li>Persimmon<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/marketforceslive/2012/aug/21/persimmon-profit-boost-analysts-unimpressed"> profits up 65% to £98m</a></li>
<li>Berkley <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/12/07/uk-berkeley-earnings-idUKBRE8B60A120121207">profits up 40% to £142m</a></li>
<li>Bellway <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/10/16/uk-bellway-results-idUKBRE89F0MP20121016">profits up 57% to £103m</a></li>
<li>Redrow <a href="http://www.cnplus.co.uk/news/sectors/housing/housebuilder-redrow-doubles-profits/8635930.article">profits up £17m to £30M</a></li>
<li>Galliford Try <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/9550359/Housebuilder-Galliford-Try-reports-record-profits.html">profits up 80% to £63m</a></li>
<li>Bovis <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/9486782/Profits-double-at-Bovis-as-sales-increase.html">profits up 100% to £16m</a> </li>
<li>Crest Nicholson <a href="http://www.crestnicholson.com/pressroom/Strong-margin-growth-driving-good-first-half-performance-Interim-Results-2012/">profits up £34m to £12m</a></li>
<li>Bloor <a href="http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/New-home-boom-sees-profits-soar/story-17557043-detail/story.html">profits up £18m to £40m</a></li>
</ol>
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I suspect that most people would be surprised to hear this, but far from having a difficult time, many of these companies are making record profits. How? simply by building fewer homes for higher prices. In their results both Persimmon and Bellway even boast that their average house sale price is the highest it's ever been. It appears suspiciously like the large house builders have happily accepted government support and used it to shore up their own profits by building a small amount of expensive houses for the small number of people who can actually afford their prices. If I'm right and affordability is the real problem, this hardly feels like the answer.<br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">N.b. the profits data given here is the latest from each company and is a mixture of full and half year reports. Bloor only publish operating profit information for the holding company Bloor holdings.</span><br />
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Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com163tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-59006504970334535992012-12-11T14:17:00.001+00:002012-12-13T13:34:49.034+00:00A letter to Graham Jones MPDear Graham,<br />
<br />
I’ve just seen <a href="http://hhgrahamjones.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/why-save-britains-heritage-and-empty.html#more">your latest blog post</a>, and seeing as you were good enough to mention us, I thought it deserved a reply. If I can summarise you make three points: <br />
<ol>
<li>“It’s a false argument to suggest that those on housing waiting lists are in desperate need for these homes”</li>
<li>Your constituency has declining population and therefore demolishing houses is necessary.</li>
<li>That guacamole eating southerners like me are dictating national policy.</li>
</ol>
<br />
Perhaps I can start with the first point and refer you to the latest published housing statistics for Hyndburn (source:<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/housing-strategy-statistical-appendix-hssa-data-returns-for-2010-11">https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/housing-strategy-statistical-appendix-hssa-data-returns-for-2010-11</a> )<br />
<br />
Empty homes: 2565 (the 2nd highest rate in England) <br />
Families on the housing register: 4001<br />
Families housed by council: 96<br />
New homes completed: 0<br />
New homes granted planning permission:0<br />
New homes built by the council:0<br />
New homes built by Housing Associations: 0<br />
New affordable homes built by others: 0 <br />
New affordable homes granted planning permission:0<br />
<br />
Of course statistics never tell the whole story, and you may well have some more recent (as yet unpublished) data; but it’s pretty hard to support your claims based on this evidence. There clearly is a great deal of housing need, and much as you and I would like these people to be housed in nice new houses, there’s no evidence of any being built or about to be built. Your suggestion of knocking two houses into one is a good one, but I fail to see how demolishing houses in these circumstances helps anybody when there is so little building in prospect. <br />
<br />
Your second point is that homes need to be demolished because there is a declining population. I accept this is the case in a few areas, (although the population of Lancashire is projected to rise over the next 20 years) but can you honestly say that none of these houses were decanted? Can you also be sure that uncertainty over possible demolition did not cause people to move out? . I know if the council kept threatening to bulldoze my house I’d look to move to somewhere where they’d leave me alone. This is important, because if you can’t be certain of these points then it's equally likely that demolition plans have helped create the problem you now cite. <br />
<br />
I am of course flattered by your implication that my colleagues and I are driving national policy. As it happens I’m not a southerner, I just happen to live here because (like you) I have a job here. But your invitation to have a debate in a chip shop in the north is perhaps your best idea here. I will however be careful to avoid the <a href="http://paullinford.blogspot.co.uk/2009/03/and-portion-of-your-very-excellent.html">Peter Mandelson faux pas </a>and remember that the green slimy stuff is mushy peas not guacamole.<br />
<br />
<br />
Update 13th December in response to <a href="http://hhgrahamjones.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/why-save-britains-heritage-and-empty.html">Graham Jones' reply </a><br />
<br />
Dear Graham, <br />
<br />
I’m very grateful for <a href="http://hhgrahamjones.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/why-save-britains-heritage-and-empty.html">your reply</a>. Funnily enough I agree with some of what you say, but perhaps that’s because you are rebutting arguments that I haven’t made. <br />
<br />
I’d like to challenge a few points though. Firstly your declining population point: <a href="http://www.lancashire.gov.uk/office_of_the_chief_executive/lancashireprofile/main/popprojection.asp">Lancashire county council’s population projections</a> don’t agree with you. They show a slow but steady increase in population for Hyndburn over the next twenty years. But perhaps they haven’t factored in the council’s demolition policy, which, as I’ll come onto, may be a self-fulfilling prophecy. <br />
<br />
I’d also like to correct you on our policy on demolition. It isn’t actually true that we're against it on principle; I think it’s a sensible approach sometimes where obsolete housing needs to be replaced. What I’m against is speculative clearance. Knocking people's houses down in the hope that the cheap land it frees up will lure in a private developer to build something. <br />
<br />
I’m not in favour of public subsidy footing the bill for renovating all empty homes. I do think its pragmatic for government to invest in refurbishing empty homes to create affordable housing. As you know there was a grant program this year that did just that, but I see Hyndburn didn’t apply. However, another bidding round has just opened, and I’d be more than happy to help the council make an application. <br />
<br />
I see that you didn’t comment on my questions about how the houses you want knocked down became empty in the first place. It’s important to point out that a lot of empty houses in ex housing market renewal areas were decanted and the program caused blight leading to many others becoming empty. Of course the housing market was weak in the first place, but the HMR program poured £2.5bn of taxpayers money in with little obvious benefit, and left a lot of problems like the scale of housing vacancy we are discussing here. . <br />
<br />
You are right on this point, I accept that refurbished empty houses might not be the aspirational choice for all the 4001 families on the councils waiting list, but at least the houses exist and can be readily made into decent homes. Your proposal of knocking them down combined with the area’s nonexistent house building programme would mean that most of the 4001 families won’t get a house at all. Faced with this, what do you think they’ll do? I think they'll move somewhere else, which is why your policy probably is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-10767559702545435442012-11-07T17:04:00.001+00:002012-11-07T17:04:37.398+00:00The Great British Property Scandal <br />
Tonight Channel 4 will broadcast a new <a href="http://cache.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-british-property-scandal/articles/home/">Great British Property Scandal TV programme</a>. It follows the progress that has been made over the last eleven months since the original series was broadcast and investigates new scandals that it has uncovered of properties left empty when people need homes. <br />
<br />
These TV shows matter. Even the English housing minister admitted it: “we’re in a housing crisis”. Simply put, there are more people who need homes than homes available to live in. Yet fewer homes are being built at any time since 1928.<br />
The Great British Property Scandal TV series could not have come at a more important time. By late 2011 there was consensus that British housing supply was in a mess, and calls for building more homes were sounding increasingly hollow. But one idea was gaining momentum: if we can’t build enough houses, why not get Britain’s million empty homes back into use? It was not a new idea, my own organisation has been campaigning on this issue for 20 years with some success, but never before had the idea been put so forcibly to the British public, and so publicly to the government.<br />
<br />
George Clarke was the man to do it, and over the course of a week in December last year he told the scandalous story of how 1 million homes were lying empty when so many people were left without a decent home at all.<br />
<br />
The scandal George exposed was not just that homes were left unoccupied, but that public money was being used to systematically empty and demolish perfectly good houses. Standing in a wasteland that had previously been a street of houses, George berated the system that has left us with 2 million households in housing need and a million homes lying empty.<br />
<br />
Of course government policy was never intended to create the housing problems we now face, but there is no escaping the fact that some government housing policy has failed. The Housing Market Renewal Programme started in 2002 aimed to clear streets of old houses in areas where the housing market had collapsed. The aim was that the cleared land would attract developers who would build new homes. Perhaps predictably the cure turned out to be worse than the disease. The acquisition and demolition programme blighted already troubled areas, and the 2008 economic downturn caused developers to lose interest in building replacement houses. With thousands of houses emptied and many more flattened, government funding for the programme was withdrawn last year. Many cities in Northern England are left with a patchwork of derelict land and empty houses.<br />
<br />
The scale of the problem should not be doubted. If building new houses was proving difficult this would be no easy fix either. But George’s campaign has attracted huge public support and triggered off action in government too.<br />
<br />
In the year since the first Great British Property Scandal series was broadcast, the government has introduced an empty homes grants programme and has helped us set up the National Empty Homes Loans Fund. Low interest loans to help get empty homes back into use in an affordable way will be available, through us, early next year. In the last year similar funds have opened in Wales, Scotland and there will soon be a fund in Northern Ireland too. Councils are being encouraged to charge higher council tax on empty homes to incentivise owners to get them back into use - and councils themselves are being rewarded when they get empties back into use.<br />
<br />
Most important of all, other new empty home refurbishment programmes are starting to spring up. The grants and loans programmes are making it possible for long term empty homes to be brought back to life, providing affordable homes for those in need.<br />
The new housing minister has yet to say it, but there can be little doubt that we are still in a housing crisis. Nevertheless the progress on this one issue over the last year has been nothing short of remarkable.<br />
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-6348352215010808242012-09-27T10:26:00.000+01:002012-09-27T10:27:43.916+01:00Don't Build More HomesMy <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2012/sep/20/dont-build-more-homes?CMP=twt_gu">article </a>was published on the Guardian's website earlier in the week with the slightly unfortuante title "Don't Build More Homes" The point I'm making is not that we shouldn't build more homes. I'm convinced we do need more in the South East and a few other parts of England, the purpose of the article was to examine why they are not getting built. In my view the current low house building rates are a symptom, the core problem is affordability. Here is the article: <br />
<br />
Am I alone in getting bored with the "build more homes" answer to every question in <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=23339144" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Housing">housing</a>?
We hear it daily from politicians, housebuilders, and lobby groups as
if it were a mantra. Whatever the housing problem, it seems, the only
answer is to build more homes and the way to do it is for government to
provide more subsidy to housebuilders. In theology, mantras are not supposed to be questioned, but I think it's time we subjected this one to a bit more scrutiny.<br />
<br />
Let
me first point out that I'm not saying we don't need more homes; quite
clearly we do in some parts of the country. But addressing it by finding
new ways to subsidise housebuilders has not only failed (housebuilding
has fallen to 100,000 units a year), it is counterproductive.<br />
I've
visited three countries in the past couple of years that have had big
housebuilding programmes: Spain, Ireland and Portugal. What I saw there
saddened me. Not only do their building booms appear to have worsened
their economic situation, the new homes they produced appear to be
having little social benefit.<br />
It strikes me that the major housing
problem in the UK is not supply (technically there is a million house
surplus in England), but people's ability to afford housing. Median
house prices are more than six times median earnings in England – double
what most experts think is sustainable.<br />
<br />
Essentially people's
wealth has not kept up with house prices. Why? Obviously not enough
people have seen their incomes rise, but I'd argue that government policy,
introduced with the best of intentions, has made the other side of the
equation worse. Subsidies to housebuilders, artificially low interest
rates, mortgage rescue, bailing out failing banks and subsidies to social housing have all either helped house prices rise faster than they would have done otherwise, or prevented house prices dropping.<br />
<br />
The
fallacy with building your way out of the problem is that people still
can't afford the houses you build. This is what Spain, Ireland and, to a
lesser extent, Portugal found. In fact to get the building boom going
in the first place they had to offer builders big tax breaks and
subsidies, and then offer further subsidies to help people buy them.
There is a large lobby in this country to do the same here. Apart from
whether we could afford such an approach, I just don't think it works.
Housebuilders following subsidy guidelines in Spain and Ireland built
houses that people didn't want and couldn't afford. People didn't buy
the houses, even when they were subsidised. They remained empty and now,
most galling of all, some of them are even being demolished.<br />
<br />
You
might argue that it's different in England, but it's happened on a small
scale here too. The last government's strategy of brownfield development
aligned to subsidy programmes like housing market renewal led to a
large amount of inner city flat developments. Much of what was built
sold slowly and required government bailouts to prevent whole scale
abandonment. Even now there are hundreds of empty flats in town centre
developments in places like Ipswich. Places which then, and still, claim
to have a housing shortage.<br />
<br />
It appears that no politician can
face it, but the only answer is to let house prices drop to their
natural level in relation to incomes. That would require a
less-interventionist approach, ignoring the appeals of the housebuilding
lobby and having to deal with the consequences of what would
undoubtedly be serious human impact through repossessions for example.But
after this had happened house prices would be in balance with incomes
and people would buy houses again. This would create the demand that
would get builders building again.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-62916605415439010372012-03-02T11:45:00.002+00:002012-03-02T11:46:40.502+00:00Stalled development and long walks for the milk<div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">I like this <a href="http://www.estatesgazette.com/blogs/london-residential-research/">blog,</a> although its rather odd name fails to explain what its about. The pint of milk test was as far as I can remember first coined by think tank <a href="http://www.ippr.org/">IPPR</a> as a theoretical test on the accessibility of new developments to local services. The implication was if it took you more than 10 minutes to walk from the development to a shop where you could buy a pint of milk it really was cut off and badly located. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">Somewhere that almost certainly fails the pint of milk test is</span><span style="font-size: small;"> <a href="http://www.iylo.co.uk/explore.html">IYLO</a>,</span><span style="font-size: small;"> an unusual building built on a traffic island a good 15 mins walk from </span><span style="font-size: small;">Croydon</span><span style="font-size: small;"> town centre<a href="http://www.iylo.co.uk/explore.html"></a>. The glossy website brochure describes IYLO as "Inspiration for Life" and "the only 100% private development of its size in London" ( a euphemism that I'll explain later). What it fails to mention is that the block of <a href="http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/Construction-company-gone-administration/story-12701814-detail/story.html">182 flats</a> is unfinished and 100% empty. Work on the building stopped in 2009 when the developer went bust, it briefly restarted last year but the <a href="http://www.thisissurreytoday.co.uk/Construction-company-gone-administration/story-12701814-detail/story.html">new owner went bust</a> too. In an attempt to get things going again the council agreed to drop its social housing requirements (hence the 100% private tag). It apparently worked, the building was <a href="http://business.highbeam.com/410547/article-1G1-271977176/chinese-buyer-chooses-croydon-uk-debut">recently sold</a> to a Chinese development company for a knock down £10m (£55k a flat). If you are feeling confident, and don't mind a long walk for the milk you can buy one now, if enough people do the same work will no doubt restart. If not Inspiration for Life may still be a long way off in Croydon.</span></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-58648883741525251772012-02-27T15:22:00.001+00:002012-02-27T15:24:51.634+00:005,000 demolitions make no sense<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Does this make sense to you? Over 5,000 houses are set to be demolished under a programme that was supposed to be for re-housing people. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The programme is the Housing Market Renewal(HMR)Transition Fund. The guidance for the fund (down load avaialble <a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/development/extra-funding-ruled-out-for-pathfinders/6515921.article">here</a>) said “ It is intended to fund acquisition of homes/ relocation of individuals (with some funding for linked costs eg. relocation expenses) and at the margins some site security or clearance costs.”</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Launching the fund, and commenting on the predecessor HMR programme that he had wound up Housing Minister Grant Shapps said “<a href="http://conservativehome.blogs.com/localgovernment/2011/11/ending-the-obsession-with-demoliton-of-prescotts-pathfinders.html"><i>There was widespread public controversy over anobsession with demolition over refurbishment, the lack of transparency of thePathfinder quangos, large profits by developers, the demolition of our nation’sVictorian heritage and perverse incentives being given to run downneighbourhoods.</i></a></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">He added that councils "<a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/development/councils-angry-at-regeneration-funds-claim/6520267.article">s<i>hould not be pursuing large-scale demolitio</i></a><i>n</i>"</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">And yet that is exactly what councils are doing. <a href="http://emptyhomes.com/latest-news/dont-knock-them-down-give-them-away/">Information obtained by Empty Homes </a>under the Freedom of Information Act shows that councils have been awarded funding for demolishing 5,125 homes and renovating just 113. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In our view this is in itself a scandalous waste. Many of these homes could be brought back into use, and the £70m of public funding that is being poured into this exercise could have paid for renovation instead.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">What on earth is going on? Despite the guidance, and despite what ministers have said, councils seem to have got a completely different idea. A source at Hull City Council told Inside Housing </span>“<i><a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/development/councils-angry-at-regeneration-funds-claim/6520267.article">It could not have been made any clearer: this(transition fund) was intended for demolitions.</a>”</i> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Made clearer by whom? According to Inside Housing "</span></span><a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk//6520562.article"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Grant Shapps is understood to be concerned by the move, and has ordered a review of how the funding is being spent."</span></a></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-60793973808263730022012-01-23T17:54:00.001+00:002012-01-23T17:56:29.751+00:00Pathfinder - and you thought it was over<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">Housing minsiter Grant Shapps has made his views on Housing Market Renewal very clear. He didn’t like it. In fact he disliked it so much that he brought the whole programme to an early end last year.... Or so we thought.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">Housing Market Renewal or Pathfinder as it was more commonly known was a large government programme that aimed to regenerate the housing market in nine of the poorest areas of the North and Midlands of England. Between its inception in 2003 and its end last year it spent £2.3bn on demolishing 30,000 houses and causing 15,000 to be built. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">Quoting SAVE Britain’s Heritage Shapps said “From the start, pathfinder showed an appetite for destruction....The classic English terraced house was demonised as “obsolete”. Whole neighbourhoods were declared surplus at the keystroke of a consultant’s laptop. Bureaucratic arrogance reduced communities to inmates of a “Zoo”—Zone of Opportunity—for house builders. Statisticians assumed compulsory purchase and eviction for demolition were acceptable measures for householders in a property-owning democracy. Quite predictably, the cure turned out worse than the disease.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">The decision to end Pathfinder was one we supported, although public investment in some of the poorest communities in England should be welcome, the use much of it got put to was in our view counterproductive. The programme that was originally intended to regenerate communities ended up demolishing them. It was also ineffective in reducing the levels of empty homes, despite that being one its major aims. There are still about 40,000 empty homes in pathfinder areas, about the same as when the programme began. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">But stopping Pathfinder has not proved as easy as it sounds. Local authorities had a pipeline of properties lined up for demolition. First an area was “red-lined”, many residents moved out voluntarily, owners were then bought –out , the reluctant ones subjected to compulsory purchase. This land assembly process took years, and so to stop it any point left thousands of people and homes part way through the process. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">After strong lobbying from pathfinder councils, the government eventually agreed that simply turning the funding tap off was not enough. They agreed a transition fund that it announced would allow an orderly wind-down and allow people stuck in the middle of it to be re-housed. The fund originally £30m (later topped up to £35m) was agreed for the five worst affected areas: East Lancashire, Hull, Merseyside Stoke, and Teesside. Applications were approved late last year. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">Announcing the funding Grant Shapps was again strident in his criticism of the pathfinder programme:“<span style="color: black;">Under the previous controversial scheme, local communities in some of the most deprived areas of the country were told they would see a transformation of their areas. But in reality, this amounted to bulldozing buildings and knocking down neighbourhoods, pitting neighbour against neighbour, demolishing our Victorian heritage and leaving families trapped in abandoned streets. This programme was a failure and an abject lesson to policy makers."</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">Given the language and the tone that surrounded this fund, you might very well expect that it would be made available for reversing the pathfinder policy. But to most people’s astonishment the government’s funds are to pay for more of the same. Charles Clover writing in yesterdays’ Sunday Times said </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">"The bid for Merseyside, which Shapps approved, goes far beyond rescuing isolated households. Under this “exit strategy”, councils on Merseyside will demolish another 2,369 homes by 2018, on top of the 4,489 destroyed already. There are no proposals for refurbishment.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">The approved Teeside bid sets out its ambitions clearly </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">“</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;">the individual local authority forward strategies for the majority of these areas in the short-medium term is demolition followed by grassing over until market conditions improve.”</span></div><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: small;"> Pathfinder it seems is far from over. </span>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-61223450997560258422011-11-18T13:29:00.002+00:002011-11-18T13:32:28.886+00:00Why are councils knocking down council houses when there is a shortage of affordable housng?Sounds barmy doesn't it. But Nottingham city council have <a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/development/councils-to-demolish-homes-to-cut-hra-debt/6518666.article">identified nearly 1000, and Birmingham over 1200</a> homes that they have lined up for demolition. If all councils demolish at the same rate it will mean 60,000 affordable homes are to be demolished across England, with only vague plans that some of them will ever be replaced. <br />
Perhaps even more scandalously it turns out that most of these homes are occupied. The tenants will be evicted and presumabaly put into temporary accommodation.<br />
<br />
What could possibly justify this huge upheaval of people and such a big loss of affordable homes? The shocking answer is - accounting reasons! <br />
<br />
The government has decided to allocate it's own housing debt to councils as part of the <a href="http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=94698">scrapping of the HRA subsidy system</a>. Essentially all councils with council homes take a pro-rata share of the government's £23billion housing debt in exchange for keeping rental income on their housing stock. The driver for this was partly councils' unhappiness with the current system, but surely also a desire from Treasury to remove a huge debt off the public deficit. <br />
The unintended consequence is that councils are seeking to avoid the debt by demolishing houses. Each council house they own will attract around £12,000 of debt.Get rid of a 1000 houses and you avoid £12m debt. <br />
<br />
Housing minister Grant Shapps was on <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017528s#p00ly0f7">You and Yours</a> on Radio 4 with me yesterday sounding reassuring. Although he didn't deny that councils will demolish homes to avoid debt, he said that there was unlikely to be an overall increase in demolitions from this measure. Hmmm... I'm not convinced. This looks like the policy people missed the consequence of thier policy. I don't like Nottingham and Birmingham's oppurtunism and cynicism, but have no doubt who is really repsonsible for this disastrous policy. Treasury.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-79483966883184270662011-11-08T11:39:00.001+00:002011-11-08T11:47:25.932+00:00Want to know where all the empty homes are? You can'tImagine for a moment that there is a map of the whole country that shows where every empty home is, how long it has been empty, and who owns it. Imagine too that it is published on-line by the government, it is continually updated and is free to use. Wouldn’t that be amazing for organisations that refurb homes and create affordable housing?<br />
<br />
Putting aside the privacy issues for a moment, who should be allowed to use this map? Should it be freely available to everybody? <br />
<br />
If not, who? <br />
<br />
Imagine no longer. The map actually exists as I described. It’s called the <a href="https://signet.hca-online.org.uk/live/custom/login/EH_entryscreen.aspx">Empty Homes GIS Toolkit</a> and is published by the Homes and Communities Agency. They, in conjunction with Ordnance Survey, who actually own the maps, decided, probably wisely, that access should be restricted. Unless you have signed something called the <a href="http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/public-sector/mapping-agreement/index.html">Public Sector Mapping Agreement</a> you aren’t allowed to see the map. <br />
<br />
Who is allowed to sign <a href="http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/public-sector/mapping-agreement/eligibility-criteria.html">this agreement</a>? Not, me, and not you, unless you work for what is considered to be a public sector body. This leaves the rather bizarre situation that: <br />
<br />
Housing Associations<br />
Housing cooperatives <br />
Housing Charities<br />
Universities …are banned from seeing the map<br />
<br />
But Government departments, and local councils, and others including <br />
Royal National Lifeboats<br />
Mountain rescue services<br />
Cancer registries<br />
Areas of Outstanding National Beauty … are allowed full access<br />
<br />
Now let's come back to those privacy issues. You wouldn’t want details of empty houses being broadcast to everybody would you? So the line has to be drawn somewhere. That somewhere appears to be between government and non- government organisations. The implication being only government organisations can be trusted with keeping information about property secure. But a quick look at the <a href="http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/docs/public-disclosures/psma-members-list.xls">list of signatories</a> shows that the UK’s biggest broadcaster, the BBC has full access to the map. <br />
<br />
So here is a goldmine of information that could be invaluable to housing associations and other affordable housing providers and help get empty homes back into use. That is hampered by a set of rules that prevent those that could use it actually seeing it. If ever there was a case of nonsensical bureaucratic rules that needed changing it is surely this.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-10323686870170690352011-08-23T17:29:00.001+01:002011-08-23T17:34:27.572+01:00Football wrings the last drops of money from thier communities<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">From London to Liverpool England’s richest football clubs are wringing the last few drops of money out of their communities by boarding up properties and homes for future developments. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Football is, or at least was, the working mans sport. The great clubs of this country were founded in the gritty working class areas of our towns and cities. The founder members of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the Football league from Blackburn , to Stoke, to Everton were set up where the men lived who worked in the heavy furnaces of Britain’s industrial heartlands. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Life was hard, but for ninety minutes on a Saturday afternoon working men could go and cheer and jeer their team a few minutes walk from where they lived. It created communities and identities for areas that frankly looked pretty much the same. Perhaps in the back of many football supporters’ minds was the remote possibility that they, their son or grandson could one day become a player for the club too. Occasionally it happened; Stanley Matthews was born around the corner from the Victoria ground where he became a legend for Stoke City, Bobby Moore was born just up the road from West Ham in Barking, and Paul Gascoigne was born over the river from Newcastle in Gateshead. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But many things have changed. Football has become a mega business. The Premier league (where Blackburn, Stoke and Everton still play) has become the biggest revenue-generating league in the world. Broadcasting matches to vast worldwide audiences and recruiting vastly paid players from every corner of the globe. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The working class man might well ask what this has all got to do with him and his hometown anymore. First the heavy industry disappeared, then the club moved away from their grimy inner city homes to smart corporate stadiums on the city ring road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally the once remote chance of his son playing for the team disappeared altogether. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The final insult is the dismissive way some of the reaming inner city clubs are landbanking property around their grounds. This week housing </span><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/ayre-accuses-government-in-liverpool-stadium-row-2340932.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">minister Grant Shapps criticised Liverpool council and football club</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> for the delay in redeveloping Anfield stadium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This extraordinary saga has been dragging on for the best part of fifteen years. In the late 1990s Liverpool FC’s neighbours Everton asked the council if they could build a new stadium in the nearby Victorian municipal park; </span><a href="http://www.friendsofstanleypark.org.uk/StanleyP.html"><span style="color: purple; font-family: inherit;">Stanley Park</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Not surprisingly the council said no. But in a breathtaking act of cheek Liverpool FC then made the </span><a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/columnists/2007/08/31/food-for-thought-over-the-long-mersey-grounds-debate-100252-19715135"><span style="color: purple; font-family: inherit;">same request</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> but with the added threat that if they didn’t get what they wanted they would move away from Liverpool altogether. Fearing that they would loose vast income from the club the council </span><a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/sport/columnists/2007/08/31/food-for-thought-over-the-long-mersey-grounds-debate-100252-19715135"><span style="color: purple; font-family: inherit;">capitulated</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Planning permission was given in 2008, but a change of ownership of the club meant the proposal was put on hold where it still sits. Meanwhile the club keeping its options open had acquired houses around its existing Anfield ground. All of the houses on Kemlyn road were demolished in the early 1990s to make way for a new stand. Homes in nearby Skerries and Lothair Roads were bought up and boarded up. To the club’s credit the Skerries road houses were eventually renovated and sold, but today virtually every house in Lothair road remains empty and boarded up waiting in case the club change their mind again and decide to expand their current stadium. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In London many houses on Tottenham high road stand empty and boarded up following August’s riots and arson. But </span><a href="http://www.savebritainsheritage.org/docs/articles/tottenham%20letter.pdf"><span style="color: purple; font-family: inherit;">fifteen have been empty for much longer</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. They form the frontage of the road behind which Tottenham Hotspur’s White Hart Lane ground sits. The properties were bought by the club for an apparently aborted plan to build a public piazza in front of the ground. These weren’t just any old buildings they included Georgian and Victorian houses many of which are listed buildings. The demolition of buildings like these would in normal circumstances be prohibited, but taking a leaf out of Liverpool’s book the club threatened to walk away altogether if it didn’t get what it wanted. Plans were mooted that the club would </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2007/jan/30/sport.comment3"><span style="color: purple; font-family: inherit;">move into Wembley stadium</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> and a bid was submitted to </span><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-452429/Spurs-open-talks-use-Wembley-White-Hart-Lane-redeveloped.html"><span style="color: purple; font-family: inherit;">set up home on the site of the Olympic stadium.</span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">As the country searches for answers as to why the inner cities erupted into disorder and violence in August, some of the football clubs that once defined these areas might pause for thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have their actions and search for wealth added to the sense of purpose and stability of the areas they represent?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or have they exploited them and threatened to walk away if they don’t get what they want? The streets of vacant property surrounding football grounds suggest the latter. </span>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-48901145171575967302011-04-27T18:11:00.003+01:002011-04-27T18:35:08.844+01:00Councillor Richard Kemp and Why Houses Must Go.Grant Shapps has again <a href="http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/Ex-Beatle-Ringo-Starr-Government-Steps-In-To-Save-His-Childhood-Home-From-The-Bulldozers/Article/201104315976031?lpos=Showbiz_News_Third_UK_News_Article_Teaser_Region__0&lid=ARTICLE_15976031_Ex-Beatle_Ringo_Starr%3A_Government_Steps_In_To_Save_His_Childhood_Home_From_The_Bulldozers">stepped in</a> to delay the demolition of the Welsh Streets in Liverpool. This saga has been dragging on now for seven years. So long in fact that you would be forgiven if you'd forgotten what the point of the demolition was in the first place. So here is Councillor <a href="http://richardkemp.wordpress.com/about/">Richard Kemp</a> to explain. Councillor Kemp is the leader of the Liberal Democrats in local government and vice chair of the LGA, a councillor on Liverpool City council and vice chair of a housing association. He is by all accounts a highly respected figure in local government and housing circles. But he has, as one Liverpool resident put it to me last week, “got blood on his hands.” This is of course metaphorical blood. But the polarisation of opinion on housing in Liverpool runs so deep that it would make little difference if it were real blood. Cllr Kemp has not only instigated many of the housing clearance programmes in Liverpool he is actively in favour of continuing the policy of demolishing houses and the Welsh Streets is his next target. In a <a href="http://richardkemp.wordpress.com/2011/01/29/housing-is-about-people-not-buildings/">recent blog post</a> he explains why. <br />
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<em>It (housing market renewal demolition) was predicated on a fact – Liverpool has too many two up two down Victorian properties for which there would not be a market to the current extent even if they were modernised.</em><br />
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A worrying start. This isn't a fact, it's an opinion, and one that doesn't stand up to much scrutiny. In areas where homes were modernised such as <a href="http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/article4261072.ece">Chimney Pot Park</a> in Salford the demand has been huge. <br />
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Anyway he goes on : <em>We actually went and asked a vital group of people a simple question in 1998, “Why did you move out of Liverpool?” The answer was complex but compelling. They were moving because our services were crap and the housing did not meet their aspirations. They wanted to live in 3 bed roomed detached and semi-detached homes in a nice clean area with a good school. We didn’t provide any of these things.</em><br />
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The comment about crap services is refreshingly honest, but the rest is bizarre. Is this not how cities are supposed to work? People move to the best housing they can afford. They aspire to better housing, and if they can afford it they later move out to semis in the suburbs. The fact people did so in Liverpool is entirely normal. This is not to say that the Welsh Streets were without problems, but it hardly justifys knocking them down. Had the Welsh streets had been left alone another generation of people would have followed. But the Welsh streets were not left alone. Instead the council consulted residents on whether they should be demolished. Cllr Kemp explains: <br />
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<em>They (residents of the Welsh streets) overwhelmingly supported limited demolition. In the Welsh Streets for example after a 3 year consultation process 68% of local residents voted for a demolition programme and only 15% voted against. That’s democracy in action.</em><br />
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Note the word “limited” The consultation actually showed <a href="http://councillors.liverpool.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=12968">338 against and only 97 in favour</a> of the near total demolition of the Welsh Streets that is now proposed. It certainly isn’t democracy in action. But what would replace the demolished houses? Kemp explains:<br />
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<em>In their place we would create demographically balanced housing with different types of accommodation and different tenures for different people at different times of their life. In other words we would build housing inside which communities could form and neighbourhoods would flourish.</em><br />
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Yet virtually no housing has been built to replace any of the houses that have been demolished in Liverpool. There are no plans for replacement houses in the Welsh streets. No subsidy to pay for new affordable housing. So what was it all for?<br />
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<em>In Liverpool 8 if you brought up your children well, gave them a good education there was almost an inevitability that they would move out and take your grand children with them. In other words we had housing policies which by accident or design broke up families and communities because we allowed no flexibility of provision.</em><br />
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So the answer is to demolish the houses and move everybody out guaranteeing the community would be broken up? <br />
Kemp's explanation shows the very strange thinking that led to this bizarre policy. On the one hand diagnosing real social problems and yet prescribing answers that only make things worse. Anyway it all ought to be academic now. Not only has the government stepped in to try and stop the demolition, they have withdrawn the funding that paid for the whole programme. This might sound bleak, but there is an answer, It's one I have already proposed to the council, and one I will explain in my next post.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-1944829222972740372011-03-23T17:24:00.004+00:002011-03-23T18:35:03.260+00:00The Budget and how the housing sector got it wrong<div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The budget will no doubt grab headlines for the Chancellor’s neat little fiddle to petrol prices, but I’m more interested in what’s behind some similar footwork on new homes. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoBodyText2" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The budget introduces First Buy a £250million programme that it is claimed will help first time buyers buy homes. It does this by an equity share scheme that builds up enough capital to create a 25% deposit for a first time buyer. The cost is met partly by the government (10%) , partly by the housebuilder (10%) and partly by the buyer (5%). In this way a first time buyer who can only afford a deposit of 5% of the purchase price of a house can satisfy the lender’s requirement for a 25% deposit. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Commenting on this today, the housing sector is full of medical analogies. Richard Capie of the CIH on the Today programme this morning described it as <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9433000/9433192.stm">“an adrenalin shot in the arm for the housebuilding industry which is still in intensive care.“<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></a></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Campbell Robb at Shelter described it this afternoon as <a href="http://england.shelter.org.uk/news/march_2011/budget_offers_little_help">“sticking plaster on a broken leg”</a> he went on “</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.0pt;"><a href="http://england.shelter.org.uk/news/march_2011/budget_offers_little_help">We now have a construction industry on its knees and the lowest levels of house building since the 1920s.</a>”</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.0pt;">This to me illustrates what is wrong. The housing sector has confused itself with the housebuilding industry. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Every housing problem that is raised whether it be homelessness, overcrowding, poor living conditions or affordability the sector’s answer is “ we need to build more houses” Except the housing sector doesn’t actually build any homes. The housebuilding industry does. From the housebuilders point of view this is no doubt great news. They have had their business elevated to a moral necessity by organisations with the public goodwill of Shelter and the credibility of the CIH. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But few people stop to ask two important questions. Why is housebuilding so low?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and if it were to magically accelerate would it really solve all the country’s housing problems? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The answer to the first is easy. Housebuilders aren’t building, because few people are buying. Housebuilding is just a business operating in a market. Right now what it produces is judged by the market to be too expensive, and by lenders to be too risky (because lenders judge houses to be overpriced) .What would any other business do? Obviously drop its prices. But the housebuilding industry sees itself as a special case, and the housing sector reinforces this belief. Instead they think it is the duty of the state to construct new ways for people to afford homes at high prices, and also its duty to take the risk of the inevitable house price drop away from lenders. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The answer to the second question is harder to answer. Let’s just say that a million new homes are built this year (ten times what is predicted). Would it solve lots of housing problems? Given that as I discussed a couple of weeks ago there is <a href="http://unlockingthepotential.blogspot.com/2011/02/5-big-housing-lies-and-why-public.html">no overall housing shortage</a> in this country, who would buy them and who would live in them? As the vast majority of the homes would be for private sale, it is fair to say they wouldn’t be bought by people in housing need. Perhaps there would be a trickle down effect. Perhaps the oversupply of houses would cause overall house prices to drop. All these things are possible. But we would inevitably end up with far more vacant homes (probably about a million more). I think it’s highly likely that homelessness, overcrowding, and poor living conditions would be largely unaffected, but arguably housing affordability might be improved. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So what’s really behind Firstbuy? The package is available to first time buyers who buy new homes. I don’t have figures, but the vast majority of first time buyers buy second hand houses. First Buy is therefore simply a form of subsidy to help the housebuilding industry. Campbell Robb said today “<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1465001516">T</a></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.0pt;"><a href="http://england.shelter.org.uk/news/march_2011/budget_offers_little_help">oday’s announcement will help less than one per cent of people struggling to get on the housing ladder, leaving them more likely to win the lottery than be helped through this small-scale scheme.”</a></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> He may well moan about it now, but by lobbying on behalf of housebuilders for so long the housing sector can hardly complain when the government takes them at their word.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
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</div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-45855546957311450672011-03-21T16:25:00.000+00:002011-03-21T16:25:25.174+00:00For Sale Stan Laurel's House<div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 10.5pt;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-crdjaa1oDJM/TYd7j3w9u0I/AAAAAAAAAKU/CAiKhn-yMeg/s1600/697058.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="229" r6="true" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-crdjaa1oDJM/TYd7j3w9u0I/AAAAAAAAAKU/CAiKhn-yMeg/s320/697058.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">The modest childhood homes of two of Britain’s best-known entertainers lie empty. But their fate appears very different. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 10.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 10.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">Here’s Durham council on <a href="http://www.pattinsonauctions.co.uk/ViewProperty.aspx/129008/Auction+Property+For+sale+in+"><span style="color: purple;">Stan Laurel’s empty childhood house</span></a> “the Laurel link is <a href="http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/235768/Stan-Laurel-s-childhood-home-goes-on-sale"><span style="color: purple;">vastly important for attracting tourists and generating money for the local economy</span></a>.” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 10.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;">And here’s Liverpool council on Ringo star’s empty childhood house </span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">"Ringo Starr’s house has <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-10999705"><span style="color: purple;">no historical significance demolition is the only option</span></a>.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 10.5pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt; mso-line-height-alt: 10.5pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">It’s interesting to see that Durham council believe that the Laurel connection will lead to greater demand and a greater sale price for the house. We’ll see whether they’re right when the house goes under the <a href="http://www.pattinsonauctions.co.uk/ViewProperty.aspx/129008/Auction+Property+For+sale+in+"><span style="color: purple;">auctioneer’s hammer</span></a> next week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they are right, and I’m sure they will be, it will be interesting to see whether Liverpool will seek to learn the lesson, I suspect they won’t. </span></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-77825286590615590952011-03-18T10:26:00.000+00:002011-03-18T10:26:52.617+00:00More Homes Fewer Empty Buildings<a href="http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/">Policy Exchange</a> is a think tank that is occasionally brilliant but sometimes bonkers. Who can forget their <a href="http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/publications/publication.cgi?id=79">Cities Unlimited</a> report from two years ago which advocated abandoning northern cities. It achieved the remarkable feat of uniting David Cameron and John Prescott in condemnation. Between them they described it as “<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/14/davidcameron.communities1">barmy</a>”, “<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/13/davidcameron.conservatives1">the most insulting and ignorant policy I've ever heard</a>” ,“<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/13/davidcameron.conservatives1">Insane and complete rubbish</a>”<br />
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But their latest report "<a href="http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/publications/publication.cgi?id=230">More Homes Fewer Empty Buildings</a>" for me falls into the brilliant category. In fact it is one of those ideas that is so simple you wonder why nobody has come up with it before. Allow people to convert empty commercial space into homes without the need for planning permission. At the moment changing the use of a building into a home requires "change of use" planning permission. Not only is applying for this a bit of a bureaucratic obstacle course, the chance of success is low. Council planning departments are keen to protect employment spaces. A reasonable an important function you might think. But they make no distinction between operating sites that are actually employing people and vacant ones that employ nobody and have little prospect of ever employing anybody again. The truth is the planning system cannot protect employment, that is a function of the economy, it tries to do so by protecting sites, but it is poor proxy that has knock on effects causing redundant offices and rows of boarded up shops. As the report points out, even in the most economically active part of the UK, the South East of England, commercial vacancy rates are running at 17%. The same part of the country that demand and need for housing outstrips supply most dramatically.<br />
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As the report says "We have a significant housing shortage at the same time that a large number of commercial properties are vacant or partly so. Not only is this a prime cause of urban blight, but the shortage of housing, combined with the current low rate of new house building, places a huge and potentially unsustainable burden on young people an family life." <br />
The answer is elegantly simple. Commercial buildings that have been empty for more than a year should be allowed to convert into housing without change of use planning permission.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-50450668760306889852011-02-25T12:49:00.001+00:002011-02-25T14:49:53.333+00:005 big housing lies and why the public doesn't buy the housing crisisEarlier this month I was honoured to be a guest of the CIH president at his annual dinner. This huge annual event takes place in the Natural History Museum in London. Tables of the great and good of the housing industry were assembled around the Brontosaurus skeleton and under the gaze of Charles Darwin’s statue. This is always a helpful prompt to speakers enabling them to make self-deprecating jokes about how old they are how their views have had to evolve. <br />
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This year the speakers were in fiery form. There was a general theme that public and the media were not taking the housing crisis seriously enough. “Wake up and listen to the profession about the country’s housing crisis” We were told. The messages followed the common orthodoxy of our profession. You’ve no doubt heard them too There are record levels of housing need, record levels of homelessness, a record under-supply of housing, the backlog in supply is increasing every year. The system is creaking at its seems, This is a time bomb set to explode, we must argue passionately for our industry. It was entirely honourable, but to me, strangely unmoving. <br />
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Last year I, along with 5 million others read the entertaining economics book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperFreakonomics">Superfreakanomics</a>. In it the authors; Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner take a deliberately mischievous look at how things really work. They take the cold facts and come up with unorthodox conclusions. One example considers how the law affects prostitution. They argue that the greater the law cracks down, the more profitable and the more widespread prostitution become. The argument works like this. If the police arrest prostitutes they reduce the supply. The remaining prostitutes can therefore raise their price, making it more lucrative attracting more women to become prostitutes. In other words the orthodoxy of how to deal with prostitution is not only incorrect it's counter productive. <br />
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Now I don’t for one moment doubt the genuine belief and commitment of people in the housing industry expressed with such zeal by the CIH president and other speakers at the dinner, but I did wonder what Levitt and Dubner might make of it all. In the absence of persuading them to take a look I decided to try myself. I looked up the data and was slightly surprised to see that almost all of the facts and truths expressed by our industry on a daily basis turn out to be … well untrue. Here they are with references: <br />
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<strong>Truth 1: There is an undersupply of housing</strong>: Untrue, in 2008 there were 22,398,000 dwellings and 21,731,000 households in England a surplus of 667,000 dwellings <a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/table-102.xls">http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/table-102.xls</a><br />
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<strong>Truth 2: There is a growing shortfall in housing</strong>; Untrue, the growth in the number of dwellings in the UK has outpaced the growth in households every year since 1971 <a href="http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/social_trends/st41-housing.pdf">http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/social_trends/st41-housing.pdf</a><br />
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<strong>Truth 3: There are 5 million people in housing need waiting for social housing</strong>; Untrue, there are 1.76 million households on council housing registers in England which equates to about 5 million people. But these aren’t waiting lists, many of the households that are on them are in housing need, but others are not, anybody can register and some register in several council areas. Housing registers are a measure of demand for social housing. They are not a measure of housing need. <a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/141488.xls">www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/141488.xls</a><br />
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<strong>Truth 4: Homelessness is increasing</strong>: Untrue. Last year 40,000 households were accepted as being homeless by local authorities, 25% down on the previous year and a third of the number in 2003/4 <a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/141488.xls">www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/141488.xls</a><br />
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<strong>Truth 5: Social housing is in decline</strong>: Untrue- there has not only been an increase in social housing every year, but since 2003/4 the rate of increase has gone up every year. Last year 33,120 new socially rented homes were added to the stock. <a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/1406060.xls">http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/xls/1406060.xls</a><br />
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Is this the reason that the country hasn’t woken up to the housing crisis? <br />
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This is not to say there isn't a housing crisis. Many people in this country live in completely unsatisfactory housing conditions. The housing system doesn’t work on all sorts of levels for people. I also acknowledge that although the indicators I have discussed show positive progress, it doesn't mean that progress can be sustained into the future with less public money. But surely what this says is that the housing industry is a success, it's making things better for people. Yes there's a lot more that needs to be done, but if we are going to get people at large to see housing as an issue of national importance we need to break out of the cosy consensus and stop pretending things are worse than they really are. What the industry is saying may not just be incorrect, it might also be counter productive. We shouldn't expect people to believe us if what we say isn't true.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-82724459784248107872011-02-22T14:21:00.001+00:002011-02-22T14:22:42.819+00:00Earning money the right way - a suggestion for councils<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">” We want to make money out of it” ,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We should have the money not them” , “We can’t afford to make loans”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>this was Councillor Mark Howell of South Cambridgeshire District council on the radio this morning. He and I were both guests on the very glamorous<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>BBC radio Cambridgeshire breakfast show. Howell was there to talk about his council’s plan to get rid of the council tax discount it currently offers to owners of empty homes. An idea I fully support; the discount is a nonsense and does nothing to encourage landlords to make good use of their property. But Howell’s tone was dispiriting; apparently fixated on the money but seemingly uninterested in what the money could help the council achieve. I know councils are in really difficult times now. As a director of a small charity, believe me I know what it’s like to not know where the money is going to come from. But really!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Howell and many others in local government, who I have heard make similar points over the last couple of weeks could do better than this. The purpose of councils lies in what they can do for their communities not how much money they can make.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Empty homes is in fact an area where the government is actually investing more money. £100 million new targeted funding, and rewards for homes returned to use through the New Homes Bonus. Councils need to be thinking about how they can use these funds creatively to really make a difference. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Here are three ideas. Bear in mind that properties returned to use will earn the council between £7,000 and £11,000 in New Homes Bonus rewards over a six year period. In addition the council would also start receiving council tax from the reoccupied property.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">Kent County council operate a loan scheme for owners of empty property. It costs Kent about £2,700 in lost interest and administration for each home returned to use through the scheme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other councils from around the country could set up a similar scheme or even ask to join Kent's. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">There are homes that are currently not economically viable to bring back to use, even though there are lots of low income people who want to live in them. The council could make a small grant of say £5,000 available to the owner on condition that the property were let to somebody in housing need. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN;">There are 40,000 odd empty council owned houses in England. The council could sell these at discount on condition that the purchaser lived in it as their sole home and renovated it to an agreed condition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span lang="EN" style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Of course all three of these ideas cost money, but crucially they all earn more than they cost. The more things like this the council does, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the more it will earn and the more homes will be created for its community. If councils want to make money surely this is a better way to do it. </span>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-61398518580401868062011-02-20T22:54:00.003+00:002011-02-21T09:30:27.309+00:00New Homes Bonus - it might just work<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There had been speculation that when the figures came out they would show that less than 100,000 new homes were built in England last year, but when it happened last Friday the government was spared that particular humiliation. </span><a href="http://www.bdonline.co.uk/news/uk/house-building-falls-to-lowest-level-in-88-years/5013574.article"><span style="font-family: inherit;">102,570 houses were built in 2010</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. It’s still the lowest number since 1923. Of course housebuilding reacts slowly to changes of policy, and the government is still safely in the territory of being able to blame it all on their predecessors. Last week they announced details of their New Homes Bonus scheme. This looks like it’s going to be the centrepiece of their housing supply policy, and if there are not more homes as a result of this; the government will have nobody else to blame. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The idea is simple, for each new home the council gets paid a reward equivalent to the council tax paid on the homes for six years, they get another bonus of £350 a year as well if the house is affordable. Not everybody is happy with this, Sean Spiers, director of CPRE said it’s </span><a href="http://www.propertyweek.com/news/news-by-sector/residential/shapps-homes-bonus-plan-draws-diverse-criticism/5013648.article"><span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;">bribery and it's possibly illegal</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. But legal or not, bribing councils is a well-proven way for governments to get what they want. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">When the idea for New Homes Bonus first emerged early last year I must admit I had </span><a href="http://www.emptyhomes.com/documents/pr/10-05_newhomesbonus_100810.doc"><span style="color: blue; font-family: inherit;">my reservations</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> too. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Governments have been struggling for years with how to deal with the poor supply of housing in the UK. They’ve have generally concluded that way to resolve it is to try and persuade housebuilders to build more houses. Unfortunately it hasn’t worked out largely because the diagnosis was wrong. It’s not more new houses the country needs, it’s more low cost houses and they aren’t very profitable for the housebuilders to build. Instead incentives and pressure to build resulted in more houses but </span><a href="http://unlockingthepotential.blogspot.com/2007/07/britains-bad-housing.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">houses that people didn’t need</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> or want. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But may be, just may be, New Homes Bonus might work. The reason for my optimism is it seems to be genuinely focussed on the problem, not just trying to push a chosen solution. </span><a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housingsupply/newhomesbonus/"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Here’s how it works</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The council gets a bonus each year calculated on the net increase in homes. Homes can mean newly built houses, or empty properties returned to use. But if there isn’t really a demand or need for homes or the homes that get built are rubbish and nobody wants to live in them, the benefit is pretty short lived. If there is an increase in vacancy levels the number of newly emptied homes are discounted off the total of new homes. So for example a borough sees 1,000 new homes built during the year, but vacancy levels go up by 800, will only get rewarded for 200 new homes. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The long-term impact of this should be to change local authorities' view of housing supply. Hopefully the'll concluded that it'll be no use getting homes built if nobody lives in them. And hopefully they'll see it’ll be doubly beneficial to get empty homes into use (they’ll get a reward for each one and won’t loose potential reward on new build homes). And also it won’t matter who brings empty homes into use. This system doesn’t reward council activity; it rewards the outcome. Hopefully this will mean that councils will start to encourage people to do up empty properties rather than thinking that it only counts if they do it all themselves. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In other words the outcome of the New Homes Bonus should be to encourage inhabited homes, not simply housebuilding. </span><span style="font-family: inherit; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So when this system is judged in a few years time, how will we know whether it has worked? One sign of success would be that it doesn’t matter anymore what the housebuilding rate is. It’s how many homes get occupied.</span> </span></div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-45669094364273662202011-01-13T10:41:00.001+00:002011-01-13T10:42:21.600+00:00It's empty homes, not spare rooms, that can solve our housing crisis<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">George Monbiot wrote an <a href="http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2011/01/03/home-rule/">intruiging article</a> in the Guardian last week claiming that underoccupation was the big housing problem that really needed to be resolved. The Guardian have been good enough to publish <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/13/housing-crisis-empty-homes">my response</a> today. Here it is in full: </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">George Monbiot describes under-occupation of housing as our second housing crisis, after the shortfall in supply, and calls for a fight<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It needs to be researched, debated, fought over. It needs to turn political” he says.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(let’s take the housing fight to owners with empty spare rooms – Guardian 4<sup>th</sup> January) his idea might fit with an ideology that it’s all the middle class’s fault, but the real opportunities for better use of housing lie in using empty buildings not spare rooms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Monbiot’s contention is that “ a better distribution of housing we have already built” could help ease the housing crisis. He goes on to explain that the reason you’ve never heard about this before is a political conspiracy to keep it from us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You’ll seldom hear a squeak about it in the press, in parliament, in government departments or even in the voluntary sector. Given its political sensitivity, perhaps that’s not surprising” he says. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">But in all this talk of wasted space Monbit fails to mention that across the UK there are close to a million empty homes, and enough abandoned commercial buildings that could be readily converted into half a million new dwellings. In our view these have far greater potential to create homes than filling up spare rooms in under-occupied homes. There is detailed evidence to show that numbers of empty homes have increased over recent years. Under-occupation has too, but not to the extent Monbiot claims. Relying on one figure in a report on energy use, Monbiot says that “between 2003 and 2008 there was a 45% increase in the number of under-occupied homes in England” But the <a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/statistics/pdf/1346239.pdf">English House Condition Survey (p16) </a>shows an increase from 31% in 1995/6 to 37% in 2008/9.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Of the UK’s million empty homes, about half are long-term vacant with no plans for reoccupation. Amazingly thousands of them are boarded up in preparation for demolition with no replacements planned. We think that small incentives for renovation and reoccupation, and a reversal of some of the demolition programmes are the most cost effective way of providing new housing. Surveys have shown that on average, empty homes need only £10,000 of investment to get them occupied again, compared to £90,000 of subsidy to get a new social home built. It’s greener too. <a href="http://www.emptyhomes.com/documents/publications/reports/New%20Tricks%20With%20Old%20Bricks%20-%20final%2012-03-081.pdf">Research we carried out</a> recently showed that the refurbishment of derelict buildings creates far lower carbon emissions than building new homes.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">But the main reason we should concentrate our energy on getting empty buildings and not empty rooms into use is that empty homes are tangible and there is track record in creating homes from them. Dealing with under-occupation is a naked promise. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">Neither the problem, nor the outcome of tackling it, are as great as they first appear. Underocuupation is calculated using the government’s “<a href="http://www.communities.gov.uk/housing/housingresearch/housingsurveys/surveyofenglishhousing/sehlivetables/surveyenglish/224421/">bedroom standard”</a> this notionally “allocates” bedrooms to people in each household.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Couples and single people over 21 get a bedroom; younger people notionally share two to a room. If after this hypothetical family rearranging, there are two or more bedrooms left the home is deemed to be under-occupied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So a family of four living in a four-bedroom house would be under-occupying, even if it consisted of a couple sharing a bedroom and two children each with their own bedroom plus a spare bedroom. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">To most people living in this situation I doubt it feels like a problem that needs fixing. And it is hard to think of a policy, short of coercion, that would persuade them to take in lodgers. Living next to an empty home on the other hand is a different matter. Unmanaged and often out of control they can quickly become magnets for fly tipping, vandalism and occasionally arson. In some areas of the country vacancy has become a vicious circle causing neighbourhoods to empty out as they decline. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;">So investment in bringing empty homes into use is not only a very cost effective way of creating more homes, it helps regenerate neighbourhoods too. We are pleased to see that the government has made some funding available, and is considering giving incentives to communities for bringing homes back into use. However the funding is only enough to refurbish three thousand empty homes nationally. To really create a flow of new homes it needs to be aligned to incentives for owners such as targeted reductions in VAT on refurbishment costs and an end to the barmy idea of giving council tax discounts for houses left empty. With these changes not only would many owners bring their empty homes into use, the rationale for demolishing empty houses would be replaced with a cogency to reuse them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">When so few houses are being built it is tempting to think that if everybody could just budge up a bit we could fit millions of households into peoples homes and solve the housing crisis. It’s probably true that ideas Monbiot suggests would have some marginal benefit, but we believe far greater rewards will arise from investing the same energy and resources into getting more empty homes back into use and helping solve the real housing crisis. </span><br />
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</div>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-27207894749216833842011-01-07T17:30:00.002+00:002011-01-07T17:35:04.493+00:00Middle England and the Law against Squatting<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are a few phrases in the language of middle England, the mere mention of which causes the red mist to fall. European integration is one such phrase, benefit claimant another, softly softly policing yet another but if you want one to really annoy people the word “squatter” really sends middle England completely potty. It implies everything it stands against: something for nothing, scroungers jumping the queue getting things for free that they haven’t worked for. So just imagine if all of these phrases can be thrown together into one story. It happened today in the </span><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/8244715/Latvian-travels-1500-miles-to-milk-Britains-soft-laws-against-squatters.html"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Daily Telegraph</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> . A Latvian travels 1,500 miles to squat in a mansion in London because he’s heard how soft this country is on squatters. He did himself no favours by saying, “<i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">I’m going to stay round here. It’s great, it’s free and I don’t have to pay rent like a normal person</span></i><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">.” </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;">Saying "<i>I knew before I came that people live in squats and have legal protection. It’s easy here</i>.” wasn’t great, or particualrly accurate, either. </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="mso-ansi-language: EN;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The BBC are onto the story now and I’ve just been interviewd for the evening news. The question that this has raised for them is, should squatting be banned?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reading the Telegraph you might quite reasonably answer yes. But look at it another way. The law already provides a very simple easy way for property owners to remove squatters. All you have to do, as the owner, is go to court, as the owner has done in this case, and you are virtually guarrenteed to get an order that tells the squatters to go. You can choose to give them a month or 24 hours notice. After that, if the squatters stay they are breaking the law. So what needs changing? should the state really take away the responsibility from the property owner and ask the police to deal with it instead? If you think that a property owner should take responsibility for securing their own empty property and be responsible for managing it, the law should stay exactly as it is. </span></span><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for <u>that</u> word, middle England may be interested to know the word squatter has the same origin as a word they will be much more comfortable with: cottage. Both derive from </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotter_(farmer)"><span style="color: purple; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cotter</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, an ancient word meaning a subsistence farmer. </span></span>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23339144.post-84872781069700566102011-01-05T17:32:00.004+00:002011-01-05T18:06:34.012+00:00What's so Special About This House<div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B2YaE9_aAW4/TSSq19N8jRI/AAAAAAAAAKI/NkIgbfA2GVY/s1600/9+Madryn+Street.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" n4="true" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_B2YaE9_aAW4/TSSq19N8jRI/AAAAAAAAAKI/NkIgbfA2GVY/s1600/9+Madryn+Street.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What’s so special about this house?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not much you might think it's an ordinary work-a-day terraced house much like millions of others across England. Empty of course, but thousands are. Whether this house is special or not is a matter of hot debate. But regardless, something is odd. This ordinary little house is causing so much interest that </span><a href="http://ladbrokesaffiliates.blogspot.com/2011/01/council-mad-to-demolish-ringos.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ladbrokes</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> have opened a book over its future. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In case you haven’t seen the news over the last week this is 9 Madryn Street in the Welsh Streets Liverpool L8.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is special because for a short while seventy years ago it was the home of </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringo_Starr"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ringo Starr</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> the least celebrated member of the most celebrated band in history. And the reason Ladbrokes are taking an interest is because the house has the misfortune to sit within an area of four hundred houses that are due for demolition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or at least they were until housing minister Grant Shapps dramatically intervened last week. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Welsh Streets are built on a ladder pattern in inner south Liverpool. The roads apparently take their names from place names in Wales (although I’ve never heard of anywhere called Madryn) For most of their history they provided decent homes for people and as recently as 2005 were more or less fully occupied. There were problems, this has never been a wealthy area and a hundred years of wear and tear take their toll. Thirty years ago the Toxteth riots took place a few hundred yards away, and investment was promised. In fact it was another twenty years before Liverpool Council started consulting on the future of these roads. The Government had just introduced its Housing Market Renewal Programme and here it seemed was the source of the funding and the vehicle for renewal. The 2005 consultation focused on one question- should the houses be demolished?. As these </span><a href="http://www.ciaraleeming.co.uk/blog/2010/07/14/street-fighters-welsh-streets-for-and-against"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">interviews with residents</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> ,by the ever brilliant Ciara Leeming, show, some people thought so and some were against. The council’s paperwork, which I have in front of me, shows roughly a third in favour of demolition and two thirds against. In Madryn Street itself the split was 35 against and 1 in favour of demolition. But inexplicably the council decided to press on with the demolition option and claim that a majority were in favour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As is so often the way with housing regeneration it takes years for decisions to be turned into action. Like an unwanted nag in the knackers yard the Welsh Streets were left to haemorrhage residents until today just two or three people remain. Last September, five years on from the demolition decision, I took what I thought would be my </span><a href="http://unlockingthepotential.blogspot.com/2010/09/last-days-of-welsh-streets.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">last sight of the houses</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. The bulldozers were set to roll in October. But they never came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A last minute, and highly effective campaign from local campaign groups, </span><a href="http://www.savebritainsheritage.org/"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SAVE Britain’s Heritage</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> , and Beatles fans appears to given the houses at least a temporary reprieve. SAVE asked English Heritage to list 9 Madryn Street, as it had done for the birthplaces of the other Beatles. It declined. Apparently poor Ringo isn’t famous enough. It recalls the time when in their Beatles pomp a journalist asked John Lennon whether Ringo was the best drummer in he world. “He’s not even the best drummer in the Beatles” he quipped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not to be beaten, SAVE issued a </span><a href="http://www.emptyhomes.com/usefulresources/prods.html"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">PROD</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> a little known legal tool to request the secretary of state intervene to investigate why publicly owned homes are being left empty. The Secretary of State is Eric Pickles, but it was his housing minister Grant Shapps, never one to shy away from a populist cause, who responded. </span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12105528"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Commenting on the proposed demolition</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> of 9 Madryn Street he said “It’s for the nation to make a decision”. Presumably meaning localism is on hold while I decide on behalf of the nation. <span style="color: black;">'Many people consider the birthplace of the drummer in the world's most famous band to be a culturally important building,' he added, presumably meaning I’ve already decided. And in case you were in any doubt he went on to say: “There are some concerns about the way the whole demolition programme is working .. this might not be the right way forward.” </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">So to go back to my original question; </span><span style="mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">what’s so special about this house?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The answer is, it may have brought an end to the whole “demolition first” way the country tackles housing regeneration. And very welcome that is too. Of course poor Ringo, who famously ran down his place of birth on the <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/rss.xml">Jonathan Ross show</a> a couple of years ago has had nothing to say about it. He’s just been the populist peg on which this whole debate has been hung. But his role is not over. The next debate has to be how can we get these houses back into use. What better way of advertising them to potential residents than using the Beatles connection again, so I’m afraid your work is not yet done Ringo. </span></span>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347022688547349069noreply@blogger.com2