I will be now be away until September 7 on holiday.... In the meantime my colleagues will continue to be up to date with their blogs of course, please click here to see a full list of EG blogs - see you when I get back!
July 2009 Archives
Apologies it has been so very long since my last blog post, readers - I have been out of action with the dreaded swine flu for over a week... Before I bore you all with tales of high fever and aching limbs, it's been a big week in the market - the long awaited Foxtons ruling marked a win for the OFT , four eco-town plans got the green light (excuse the cheap pun, I've been very bored at home this week), and another £1.7bn package has been pumped into the sector by the government.
As I catch up on the work that has piled up on my newly-disinfected desk, I suggest reading a good, if slightly intricate, analysis of the Foxtons case here to get upto speed on the intricacies of the case.
And just a note following on from a previous blog post - Grainger finally got permission for their scheme at Wards Corner in my absence - apparently to sounds of loud cheers in their Kensington office. Well, it has been rattling on for almost four years now.
Two housebuilders have issued trading updates this morning - Barratt, which is largely positive about its future, and Redrow, which raises a few more notes of caution.
Barratt, which has recently said it is back in the land-buying market, seems to have weathered the worst of its own personal storm, as long as it can keep itself on track now. It is obviously cautious of being too optimistic, but after the hell of the last eighteen months, Mark Clare must be relieved to find some of the pressure has eased - and he has hung on to his job.
But smaller builder Redrow warned that its results were likely to be "around the lower end of analysts' current estimates". Not a good sign. It is also about to embark on an evaluation of its land and work in progress, and this land write-down is what is expected to push its annual results right down into the ground.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson unveiled his draft Housing Design Guide today, and as expected, a sizeable portion of it is talking about space. Space inside homes, outside homes, corridors, balconies, walkways, play space, public space, urban space. All houses have to be a certain size, and at the launch today the Mayor was still chirping on about "Homes for Hobbits" with the glee of a man who has stumbled over a phrase the media seems to quite like, and, my goodness, he will keep milking it for all it is worth.
The trouble is, none of it is really that new. These standards will apply to all new affordable homes built from 2011, but in adopting (roughly) Parker Morris plus ten per cent as the minimum flat size, (interesting discussion here from architects on this issue) Boris hasn't really extended the standards that the old Housing Corporation used to have. What he has done quite successfully is cut some of the red tape developers have to go through before starting development, and cut the number of requirements from 300 to 90, in theory making it easier to get cracking on new, large affordable homes to meet our dire housing shortage in this country.
What is new, however, is Boris' timetable for these standards to apply to private homes. Speaking to Richard Blakeway, the Mayor's man for housing, on the phone yesterday, he told me that by 2012 they want these standards, including those on space, to apply to all homes built on public land.
From there, if adopted by the London Plan, they will be rolled out across all homes, whatever tenure, being built in the capital.
Of course, there are a lot of "ifs" in that idea. Boris still being mayor is one of the first hurdles in the way of seeing his plan through, to say nothing of the state of the housing market by then. But even the thought of this idea sent agents and housebuilders into a panic yesterday. One I spoke to poured scorn on the idea that you could improve the quality of all the homes in London simply by making them bigger. And this is to say nothing of the damage to residential land values and house prices if housebuilders are forced to spend more on their developments.
Blakeway is convinced that housebuilders would be willing to sign up to bigger homes, and take part in the debate as a move towards "a consistent set of standards for all new housing, regardless of tenure".
I think he has a few rocky meetings ahead of him.
The Mayor of London is to unveil his long-awaited design guide on Wednesday. This draft guide, which will make recommendations about internal space standards, environmental standards along with other health and safety standards, and has the potential to have a big impact on future housing developments and all those who design or build them.
It couldn't come at a more topical time. I'm sure you have all read about the tragic fire in Camberwell, south London, where six people were killed. The design of the building is being widely attacked - it seems it had only one central staircase running through the middle of the building, leaving many trapped inside. Other criticisms include that the building was a "maze", making the task even more difficult for the 100 firefighters tackling the blaze.
The Mayor said the blaze raised "big safety questions" and at least one London Assembly member is calling for a public inquiry into the safety of all such tower blocks as well as this particular sad case. Equally worrying is that the leader of Southwark council Nick Stanton, who, after all, will not have been at the council when it was built in the 1960s, has said that £3.5m had recently been spent on the "not atypical" block, bringing it up to the government's own Decent Homes standards.
If this point is true, the government and the Mayor need to take a careful look at whether their existing safety standards are fit for purpose.
Just a thought, following on from the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning with further news on David Cameron's proposals to reduce the number of "unelected quangos" in government. This made me feel slightly nervous over my cornflakes - could the Homes and Communities Agency be one of the organisations set to get the axe? Rumours of tension between the Tories and the HCA are rife - after all, it's a Labour organisation, that reports to the DCLG, yet the London board has a Tory mayor, and several of the key players are hardly die-hard Labourites. The Conservatives are widely understood to be planning to get rid of the HCA if they are elected, although exactly what they would replace it with is not quite so clear.
After an immense amount of money and time setting up the HCA, with regional boards established and a great deal of work done to help stuggling developers and social housing providers, it seems a shame to abolish it to make a political point. As we have seen with the revolving-door policy towards government housing ministers, not much is constant or long-term in government towards housing. A quango which is not affected by the pursuit of short-term political gain might prove the best ship to steer through these murky times.
Flkr:courtesy of Arty Lee Smokes
A very interesting landmark case is discussed in a blog post here by Jules Birch from Inside Housing.
This relates to the issue of women fleeing domestic violence being treated as "homeless" even if they have been given temporary refuge in a shelter.
Given that on any day there are more than 7,000 women and children seeking refuge in temporary accommodation because of domestic violence, this House of Lords ruling is an important step in getting them re-homed permanently.
Having a temporary roof over your head for a few weeks or even months because you have had to leave your house does not count as a home - particularly for the children growing up in that environment, of which nearly 2,000 are under five years old.
This ruling will mean that the normal criteria should apply and that in most cases, local authorities will give help in finding these women a new home.
Property tycoon Leo Noe reportedly left a wedding yesterday evening to turn up in his Bentley at the scene of an explosion in North London. The incident, which is being treated as suspicious by police, put one man in intensive care and injured two others.
It's not entirely clear what happened yet, but it seems that there was an explosion in the flat above a shop owned by Leo Noe, completely destroying the flat and damaging Noe's property too. It took twenty firefights to put out the blaze.
This link to the BBC story also includes footage showing the site , and shows the truth in the detective at the scene's words "It is a miracle that not more people were hurt as a result."
