Uk & International

Iain Duncan Smith The UK government has announced plans to scrap the target to eliminate child poverty by 2020.

Dame Angela Watkinson Two pieces of legislation that will make it easier for authorities to identify criminal landlords in England were introduced by MPs yesterday.

Gavin Smart The UK government is to press ahead with proposals to introduce a seven-day waiting period before claimants are eligible for Universal Credit.

Rachel Reeves A tribunal in England has ruled that separated parents are being wrongly charged with the ‘bedroom tax’ in a ruling that can open the floodgates for thousands of claimants.

Clare Foges David Cameron’s former speech writer has urged the prime minister to axe the ‘bedroom tax’ after revealing concerns about the policy’s impact.

Hackney Council has amended an order that threatened rough sleepers with court action and fines of up to £1,000 following a campaign by homelessness groups and local people who said it risked criminalising vulnerable people. The local authority’s public space protection order (PSPO) introduced by

Alan Ward Landlords are calling for urgent discussions with ministers following a ruling by the European Court of Justice that will make it more expensive to insulate private rented housing.

Lord Kerslake David Cameron’s pledge to offer a right to buy to all housing-association tenants has been questioned by housing lawyers and a former civil service chief.

A housing association has set up its own estate agency to help raise funds for new affordable homes. Launched by Gloucestershire-based Two Rivers Housing Group yesterday, TwoCan property sales and lettings agency will gift all of its profit to support the work of the local housing charity.

The UK government’s spending watchdog has criticised the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) for its failure to anticipate problems in its implementation of welfare reform. The National Audit Office has called for the DWP to use the hard lessons it learned from implementing its recent program

By Adam van Lohuizen, senior economic analyst at Shelter The impact of the cuts already made by the coalition government has been severe. And the government has pledged to make a further £12 billion reduction in welfare spending by 2017-18. But the task of making these cuts has got a whole lot hard

The UK government unveiled more details of its Housing Bill during the Queen’s Speech yesterday but the plans have been greeted with a mixed reaction. The bill aims to make home ownership an attainable aspiration and contains further measures to deliver an extra 200,000 new homes through the new S

Alan Ward Landlords have expressed serious concerns over UK government proposals to make private landlords responsible for checking the immigration status of their tenants.

A landmark case at the Supreme Court could change the way English local authorities use the term “intentionally homeless”. The court ruled that the London Borough of Waltham Forest (LBWF) was wrong to refuse a woman’s request for housing help on the grounds she had made herself “intentionall

A waste management company is installing cameras to its vehicles in a bid to reduce the number of homeless people killed after sleeping rough in industrial-sized wheelie bins. Last year staff from Biffa found 93 people sheltering inside large industrial waste bins, while four were killed after being