The election result may have more to do with housing than we think
Housing is often ‘the dog that doesn’t bark’ in elections but last week could it have been nipping away in the background? One of the most striking pieces of analysis of how Britain voted came from the Financial Times, which showed how pro-Conservative or pro-Labour voters were divided by age group. Those in their middle […]
Five myths about migrants and housing
What do you know about migrants and where they live? Here are five things often said about migrants’ housing rights that are untrue or only partially true. Get the facts here. Migrants have a right to social housing New migrants from outside the EU aren’t eligible for social housing except in very limited circumstances (e.g. […]
Government plans to extend ‘right to rent’ document checks face legal challenge
For several months the Home Office has been considering extending to the rest of the UK the document checks that are now compulsory when a new letting takes place in England. Since February last year, English landlords (with exceptions like lettings by councils and through nominations to housing associations) have had to make document checks […]
Focusing on the ‘JAMs’
Few of the Government’s current investment initiatives address the housing affordability issues faced by the ‘just about managing’, but there are measures that could be taken without extra spending. Rather unusually, and surely for the first time in several years, a government housing policy statement has been welcomed by the industry and by most lobbyists. […]
Brexit means we have to build fewer houses… or does it?
Ahead of the launch of the UK Housing Review, CIH is running a series of blogs trailing its content. In the first of these we look at whether some of the claims made about the likely impact of Brexit on housing demand stack up. It’s a claim already made by some newspapers opposed to building […]
Right to rent immigration checks put vulnerable people at risk
One year ago, on 1 February 2016, the government implemented its “right to rent” scheme, requiring landlords who let property in England to carry out checks on the immigration status of potential tenants, as part of a government drive to create a “hostile environment for illegal migrants”. The government plans to extend the scheme to […]
What are the ingredients for successful Gyspy and Traveller sites?
As a new report highlights the importance of providing sites for the estimated 150,000 members of the Gypsy and Traveller population, John Perry explores what it takes to provide sites which work. Last month came a reminder about what was claimed five years ago to be Britain’s biggest unauthorised Traveller encampment, when the local authority […]
How can housing organisations respond to Louise Casey’s review into integration?
As Dame Louise Casey’s independent review into opportunity and integration reveals the challenges facing the UK CIH’s senior policy advisor John Perry asks how housing organisations can contribute. Louise Casey asks some uncomfortable questions about Britain’s failure to integrate newcomers to the country. She’s not the first to have done so, but has produced the latest […]
Pinning down the government’s house building figures
How many houses we need to build each year in England is the subject of much debate – but almost equally contentious are the statistics that show how many we are building. Just a month ago the Home Builders Federation claimed the government was misplacing enough houses to build a town the size of Stevenage. […]
8a Victoria Street
D.H. Lawrence’s relationship with the place where he grew up, Eastwood in Nottinghamshire, was always ambivalent. Its rural surroundings were ‘the country of my heart’, but the streets of miners’ cottages where his family lived were ‘sordid and hideous’. He freely used Eastwood characters in his writing, and to many locals he was ‘that mucky […]
John Perry lives in Masaya, Nicaragua where he works on