Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls will call for an additional £6 billion to be invested to build 100,000 more affordable homes, arguing that the government should use half of the £12bn windfall to the public finances in recent months to fund the rapid expansion in house building.
Under the Coalition’s new Home Bonus Scheme it has been found that London and the North West would lose £125m and £65m respectively, whilst the South East would gain £108m and the Eastern region £71m.
The government’s ‘New Homes Bonus’ scheme, which will match the council tax raised on each new house for six years, was slammed by shadow housing minister John Healey for being an expensive con, with the money coming mostly from existing local authority support grants – as revealed in a pre-election Tory green paper.
The BBC’s Chief Political Correspondent, Laura Kuenssberg, yesterday tweeted remarks made by David Cameron about the need for more discussion within the coalition before decisions are made. Simon Hughes’ intervention on council tenancies appears to indicate that the Prime Ministertest
David Miliband’s mansion tax has been attacked by the Daily Mail. But a £1 million tax, as proposed last year by Vince Cable, enjoyed significant public support.
There has been an almost deafening silence from Grant Shapps and Eric Pickles over the dropping of the Tory manifesto pledge to raise the stamp duty threshold.
Housing experts have welcomed John Healey’s announcement today of a “radical new council housing deal”.
Despite the £38bn spent on decent homes which improved hundreds of thousands of council homes, many of the worst estates continue to be untackled.
Today’s Daily Express front page criticising Housing Minister John Healey is yet another example of the Express at its hypocritical, biased worst.
The Express reports that housing benefit payments will rise this year. The rise is due to the recession and rents, not a “culture of benefits dependency”.
