Uk & International

Finance minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir (left) and communities minister Paul Givan Northern Ireland communities minister, Paul Givan, has launched a consultation on the legislative changes needed to ensure housing associations remain as independent social enterprises.

Peabody and Family Mosaic housing associations have agreed to merge to create a new organisation with combined assets worth £6 billion. Subject to a number of consents and to the views of residents, the merged housing association, which will be named Peabody, will be responsible for 55,220 homes ac

Credit agency Moody's has given the English social housing sector a ‘negative’ outlook for 2017 after warning that housing associations’ credit metrics will suffer as adverse policy changes incentivise them to take on additional risk. In a report published yesterday entitled ‘English Housing

Lord Freud Minister for welfare reform Lord Freud is to retire from his ministerial position at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) at the end of December.

Sanctions on welfare payments cost more to administer than they save and are being handed out without evidence that they actually work, according to today’s report from the National Audit Office (NAO). The independent watchdog of state spending said that imposing a financial penalty on a claimant

Graeme Brown Graeme Brown, director of Shelter Scotland, has been appointed Shelter’s interim chief executive by the Board of trustees following the announcement that Campbell Robb is to step down as chief executive at the end of the year.

Philip Hammond Chancellor Philip Hammond is to unveil a £1.4 billion investment in affordable housing and introduce measures to ban letting agents from charging upfront fees as he unveils the UK government’s Autumn Statement later today.

Lord Freud The UK government’s cap on Local Housing Allowance (LHA) has been delayed for another 12 months for general needs accommodation but will now apply to all tenants who receive Universal Credit when it is introduced in 2019.

Gavin Barwell Plans to make higher earning tenants living in social housing in England pay a higher level of rent to continue living there have been scrapped by the UK government.

Local authorities is Scotland have spent more than £750 million on temporary accommodation for homeless families in the last five years, according to new statistics. The data was obtained by the BBC as part of a wider investigation which found that the amount spent on temporary accommodation by cou

Nicola Barclay Scotland’s home builders have responded to a review by one of the UK's biggest housebuilders into the decline of home ownership in England.

British nationals without a passport face difficulties accessing rented accommodation after the UK government made landlords responsible for carrying out illegal migrant checks, according to a new survey. The Residential Landlords Association, which represents 48,000 private sector residential landl

Social housing sector tenants who challenged the so called ‘bedroom tax’ have received a mixed outcome at the Supreme Court. Two families who claimed that the removal of the spare room subsidy was unfair won their appeals against the UK government but five other claimants had their challenges di

Cardiff City Council will this week consider recommendations to suspend the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme amid a high demand for housing in the city. The Welsh Government has recently confirmed the intention to end the Right to Buy and Right to Acquire scheme within its current term and local authoritie

Housing staff will stage a demonstration outside Sanctuary Group’s headquarters in Worcester today in protest over proposed pay conditions. Members of the Unite union will highlight to members of the public the difference between CEO David Bennett’s £320,000 salary and the £8,000 pay cut that