Tag: Department for Communities and Local Government

City Deals: big news outside London

An aerial shot of housing in Bristol, with views of the cityscape and the River Avon

I’ve been following the news in my car and online today for reaction to the Government’s City Deals announcement, which hands more powers to some of England’s largest metropolitan areas outside London.

These deals for Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Manchester will see them take on new responsibilities and, in some cases, form new bodies which aim to drive growth and create thousands of new jobs in their areas.

If the recent mayoral referenda acts as any yardstick, then a story about boosting city economies does not excite the London-centric media, despite the fact that England’s eight core cities have more than 17m residents and generate around 25% of the country’s wealth.

And, true to form, the response from the national media seems to have been to play it straight or not at all (I had to dig around some websites amongst stories about Bob Diamond and cuts to the Army, also announced today, to find any coverage on this).

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Is ‘self build’ the answer to our housing headache?

Self Build

I remember the feeling as a reporter when I wrote about workers who were taking action over what they perceived to be bad wages, and would realise they were paid more than me.

I’m reminded of this today when I hear of measures aimed at helping young families onto the housing ladder and the need to address the country’s housing crisis.

I am not debt ridden, or badly paid. But when Grant Shapps talks of young families who are caught in a pincer movement between the paucity of available credit, high housing prices and the substantial deposits needed to get decent mortgages, it feels like he could be talking about me.

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Budget briefings leave little room for surprise

The media briefings orchestrated over the last few days left hardly any surprises to come out of George Osborne’s budget announcement this afternoon.

Driving to work this morning, the country was treated to the news that first time buyers are going to be helped by a £250m fund which will help 10,000 people onto the housing ladder and give the construction industry a boost. 

A bit premature perhaps, but it was only following up what newspapers reported the previous day.

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Don’t bet the house on an end to complex council finance

An aerial shot of housing in Bristol, with views of the cityscape and the River Avon

Councils who call for an end to the fiendishly complex system that takes money from their housing departments payments to fund them elsewhere are getting closer to their goal.

The Government today ‘fired the starting gun’ on its proposals to end the contentious Housing Revenue Account (HRA) system by publishing details of how it intends to do it.

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Election publicty rules raise their head in Oldham

The Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election (which concluded yesterday) threw up a familiar issue for those who work in or with the public sector, in an unusual way.

The Guardian and Labour Party blogs were yesterday reporting that Local Government Minister Andrew Stunell had apologised for a series of events which led to complaints that purdah regulations were breached.

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Five reasons to remember 2010

pexels-photo-2249532.jpeg

By any measure, 2010 was a hell of year. On a personal level, it saw me relocate, switch jobs and get to know a new part of the country.

For the sectors in which I work and the country at large, it saw a shift towards a new ‘reality’, sometimes at a bewildering pace.

I summarise it as a tough but rewarding 12 months. I’ve met interesting people and worked on plenty of great projects along the way.

Below are the five things I will remember most about 2010 (from a professional perspective). There are others I would perhaps rather forget, but I dare not blog about them (that’s PR for you).

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