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Tag: New Homes Bonus

Is income inequality screwing up the housing market? I’m curious

Is income inequality screwing up the housing market? I’m curious

For the past few years three questions have bugged me persistently. How could rising income inequality over the past thirty years not have affected the housing market? If it has had significant effects, what are they and how have these come about? Why is so little political and, it seems, academic attention paid to how income inequality might cause dysfunction within the housing market? This is in contrast to the more significant attention paid to how a dysfunctional housing system…

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Why the Government must look again at the New Homes Bonus

Why the Government must look again at the New Homes Bonus

As a critic of the New Homes Bonus, even before its inception, I had very mixed feelings reading the damning report that has emerged from the Government watchdog the National Audit Office. I find myself battling between the ugly side craving vindication and the better side being concerned for the potential damage done and how things might be improved. Today the devil has won. Grant Shapps: You were told, before you launched the scheme, when you launched the scheme and…

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Figures show we are just not building enough homes. It is that simple.

Figures show we are just not building enough homes. It is that simple.

The latest official house building statistics to emerge underline the massive task ahead for the Government if it is to meet its promise of boosting English house building rates to a level above that achieved before the recession. It was in September 2010 that Grant Shapps ambitiously announced this “Gold Standard” against which he, as housing minister, would be judged.

No prizes it seems in the New Homes Bonus for being a housing-friendly good planning authority

No prizes it seems in the New Homes Bonus for being a housing-friendly good planning authority

Yesterday the allocations were released for the New Homes Bonus. And Grant Shapps happily slapped away criticisms that councils in the North were being unfairly treated under the scheme saying three of the top five councils benefiting most are in the North or Midlands. His geography may have been correct when reading from the list of the biggest lumps of money allocated. Sadly he appears to have revealed either his ineptitude with statistics or his willingness to abuse their meaning.

Sticks for the North, carrots for the South in the New Home Bonus handicap race

Sticks for the North, carrots for the South in the New Home Bonus handicap race

Long before he was in office the Housing Minister Grant Shapps evangelised about the New Homes Bonus in a way that suggested it would lead to a new world where local residents badgered their councils to grant permissions for more homes. I’ll confess my initial reactions to the early presentations more than a year ago might fairly be regarded as sceptical, even though I am in favour of incentives to prompt development. Still, in April next year, if all goes…

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