government

Will a new Prime Minister mean a new housing policy?

George Clarke has some helpful suggestions for our new Prime Minister

So, after yet another Conservative Party leadership contest Liz Truss has walked through the doors of 10 Downing Street and will remain in the top job until the next general election, which is currently set for December 2024.

She will be a sitting Prime Minister with no mandate from the British Public, so it is inevitable that an early general election will be called well before that date.

You know things are changing when Evan Davis on Radio 4’s ‘PM’ programme starts talking about Air Source Heat Pumps. Yep, that’s exactly what happened on my radio yesterday.
Evan Davis did a long feature on heat pumps and even visited a home that had one installed.
Unfortunately, he went to a big posh house in London where the install costs they mentioned were massive and over a third over the cost of a typical 4-bedroom house installation, so I’m worried his feature may have inadvertently put people off.
Anyway, Evan is going to be talking about heat pumps again tonight and over the next few days, which is all very exciting for us heat pump fans.
So why is he talking about this? Because things are changing and they are changing pretty fast. At last!
For me, the rate of change hasn’t been fast enough or big enough, but things are definitely happening. The next few months are massive for the UK and for the global green economy.

Eight existing councils in Northamptonshire are to be abolished and replaced by 2 new councils of North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire to improve the delivery of public services across the county.

Has the governments announcement to remove council borrowing restrictions affected the housing market? Joe Bradbury of HA Magazine discusses....

Dissatisfied homeowners and tenants will have simple and quick access to help when things go wrong, thanks to new plans announced by Communities Secretary Rt Hon James Brokenshire MP.

Government has listened to concerns and will consult on banning the use of combustible materials in cladding systems on high-rise residential buildings

The government has today welcomed Dame Judith Hackitt’s Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety, and has made a series of commitments to make sure people living in high-rise buildings are safe.

What is retrofitting, exactly?
For the purposes of this article, I’m referring to ‘Retrofitting’ as the refurbishment of domestic and non-domestic buildings to reduce energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions.
In particular, this refers to projects that make major changes across the entire building to significantly reduce energy usage that require design by specialists.