“At present we are in danger of the worst of all; a revival of house prices fed by easier credit and housing shortage, making them still less affordable to the ordinary first time buyer; a growing private rented sector sucking in housing benefit which is in turn being reduced, cutting off low income tenants, and growing pressure on the remaining social housing stock which has been declining irredeemably in recent decades.
This week the BBC reports that the European Parliament has mostly agreed the EU budget for the seven years of 2014 to 2020 at €960 billion. Agreement rests on an extra €11 billion for 2013 being delivered.
The media headline is that the EU budget for the coming period is lower than it was for the period just ending. However, the EU budget can now roll forward its underspends, which I believe will lead to an increase in spending in the years ahead. Previously each country (member state) received the EU underspend as an end-of-year bonus or refund, and so some at least were incentivised to drag their feet in letting EU programmes get on and spend. But now, effectively, the brakes are off (perhaps a hasty statement in EU budget terms!)
For the North West of England, the allocations of this budget for the EU Structural Funds have been announced in the media as follows, at current exchange rates:
Cheshire & Warrington £122m
Cumbria £78m
Greater Manchester £356m
Lancashire £228m
Liverpool City Region £190m.
Many of the LEPs (local economic partnerships) have stated that they wish to run their own programme teams and systems during this next budgetary period, which some say would be similar to the Action Plan Partnerships arrangements in previous years. LEPs will also have control over various UK economic and regeneration funds, which could be used in part as matching funding if desired locally.
Prediction: by year 2020 all UK households will be supplied with circuit breakers to be fitted to the plugs of our fridges, freezers etc. Whenever the national voltage drops below 230v the breakers will cut out. New appliances will have the breakers inbuilt.
We now have a 25% chance of electricity blackouts in the UK each year, especially between 16h00 and 20h00 (4pm and 8pm) in the winter months. The UK government has rejected suggestions of extending variable supply contracts from heavy industry to other large consumers such a retail stores.
Behind this vulnerability has been effectively a “dash for coal” by the generating companies because coal has become so cheap on the world market. However, even though the industry’s carbon allowances are now becoming exhausted, the race remains on who can gain the most in the time that is left, and not on collective planning for the future.
It is a bit like a students’ party, when someone says “hey guys, we’re running out of beer” and everyone just refills their own glass faster; rather than anyone organising and buying or making more. The regulator (ie the adult at the party) has no real power when compared with the companies (ie the intoxicated kids). There is more money to be made in the energy market from being selfish than from being prudent.
Worse, the efforts to reduce demand in the domestic sector were being pinned on the government’s Green Deal, however reports this week show it has failed to take hold, with only four completed households nationally to date. The government response has been that this is due to teething problems with the computer software, and that many households have replaced their boilers off-scheme after an assessment.
We know we have to balance supply and demand to avoid blackouts. Most of us also know that supply is chaotic and that demand is continuing to rise, not least because of the energy demands of consumer electronics. Something has to give, hence my prediction above. To be announced by the new UK government in 2015, blaming the previous government for not “getting a grip”.
Second prediction: retail chiller cabinets will be put on variable supply contracts, but the lights and tills will not.
Link:
http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/28/does-uk-face-electricity-blackouts
The twenty-first century will see a change around the world as landscapes become increasingly used to capture energy. The main driver will be price. When subsidies for animal grain feed become unsustainable, the cost of meat production will become uncompetitive when compared with the capture of energy.
We see some of this already with wind farms and increasingly in solar PV (photo voltaic cells) in the USA as well as the UK.
This range will grow, especially in warmer countries, where we may see thermal capture being used to manufacture transportable fuels to be sold to cities around the world. If the transport issues can be sorted this may include the manufacturing and export of hydrogen fuels.
The world’s landscape has changed before: the reduction in tree cover by early humans, through to the enclosure of common land into agricultural production. This century will see the next phase of landscape transformation worldwide.
This week in Wales there was an international conference sponsored by the International Mental Health Collaboration Network (IMHCN) and the International Centre for Recovery Action in Practice, Education and Research (ICRA). It took place at the National Botanical Gardens in south west Wales on 20 and 21 June.
It was a crowded agenda with a lot of ground to cover, from local practices in Wales through to presentations from Italy, New Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Ireland, Malaysia, Brazil and most harrowing from Serbia with images of mental hospital inmates being tied down with sheets last year. Some good practice was found in parts of England, notably in Plymouth.
There is too much detail from such a conference to cover in a blog post. Perhaps my key observation is that, at last, the various professional bodies are beginning to try and come to terms with the idea of recovery, an idea which has come from people who have experienced mental suffering. The danger now, as discussed at the conference, was that the mental health professions will try and systematise recovery and in doing so will suck the life forces out of it, killing the bits that work.
Interestingly, a common theme from around the world was how powerful it was when employment was included in a recovery journey.
There is a new LinkedIn group for IMHCN for those interested in joining.
The link below is a 20 page brochure with the conference agenda and speakers details.
The BBC news website reports on findings from the Estates Gazette that UK planning permissions for large retail schemes are still favouring out-of-town areas as opposed to High Streets. An example is given of the Portas Pilot town of Margate, where it seems policy is pulling in two directions with a recent approval for an out-of-town Tesco store despite Portas’ work to reinvigorate Margate High Street. Another example is given of tension between ministers as shown in correspondence between them on possible developments on green field sites.
Has the planning system lost its way?
Essentially, it is meant to be a fair and just way of deciding between competing interests, without fear or favour. However, in recent years it has become seen predominantly as a system of entitlement for land owners to increase the value of their holdings (favour). Planning policy has been surrendered to become a fight between teams of expensive lawyers, and councillors are in danger of being intimidated by the costs of appeals and threats of damages (fear).
Planning policy has also become seen as essentially a local concern only, with national decisions restricted to major infrastructure decisions such as nuclear waste sites.
I suggest that we need our national decisions to decide on regional balances. For examples, promoting research and development sites north of Cambridge; promoting green fuel production in declining industrial areas; promoting existing airport usage not just in the South East; promoting public transport ahead of new roads even in corridors of congestion; and making consumer charging compulsory for car parking spaces in new out-of-town developments, then phased in for existing out-of-town schemes. Otherwise the Greater South East of England will continue to pull away from the rest of the UK.
Then, within this balanced national and regional framework, local planning committees can frame their decisions on particular developments. Additional local planning powers are also needed, such as limiting the number of arcades and betting shops, payday loan shops, and new powers to reconfigure High Streets to become fully functioning neighbourhood centres and not just retail centres.
National and regional planning policy needs to move on from 2010 and its knee jerk hatred of regional housing targets and regional development agencies.
Link:
Town centres ‘missing out on new retail development’ – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23010313
Chris Giles, writing in the Financial Times today, makes very good points on the UK government’s Help to Buy scheme. This programmes starts in January 2014 for three years, using £130bn to guarantee 20% of new mortgages. It was announced in the March 2013 Budget and is already showing an impact in rising house prices in and around London. The Governor of the Bank of England has criticised this programme as unsustainable and bubble-making.
Reported elsewhere was the delight within HM Treasury when the Office of National Statistics ruled that the £130bn was private debt, not public debt, even though the government are on the hook for any losses.
A key point made in the article is that this programme redistributes wealth from new buyers to existing owners.
Another key point would be to question the cuts in Housing Benefit (bedroom tax, weekly cap, etc) while pumping £130bn into the mortgage market in the run up to the next general election.
Source: FT, 25/26 May, p13.
Ian Brown, of the Stone Roses, has said that “Manchester has everything but a beach”. Some would add that it misses a large central park, unlike say London and its grand Royal Parks.
A small group of guerrilla park-makers in Manchester, ParkStarter, is asking whether every open space needs to be covered in black top and turned into a car park. The current classic example of this type of use is the site of the former BBC studios on Oxford Road. The group plans to start somewhere in the Northern Quarter in Manchester.
Previously the only way forward would be for the local authority to buy the land, or have it donated, and to find a capital source to make the site work as a park, and find a revenue source to keep it functioning. With the massive cuts in UK local government finance, especially in the northern cities, this option isn’t working at the moment.
However, some parts of the private sector property market appreciate the importance of pop-up shops (for profit) and meanwhile shops (not for profit). Maybe there is a parallel here for pop-up parks?
Links:http://parkstarter.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Manchester
I’ve written previously on the good work being done at the Tyndall Centre at the University of Manchester by people such as Professor Kevin Anderson.
Recently he gave a presentation to a committee of councillors at Manchester City Council on different models of growth, and in particular on the environmental impacts of good and of bad growth models.
His talk emphasised that social goods (such as jobs, welfare, food, literacy, housing, transport, civil society) can be increased without also having to have people working long hours and emitting ever-more amounts of greenhouse gases which cause climate change. Youth unemployment should be addressed by large-scale programmes to retrofit homes for better energy efficiency, and by low-carbon transport works.
Manchester City Council are reported to have received this presentation enthusiastically, and agreed to incorporate environmental indicators in the city’s overall Dashboard.
The previous UK government’s programme, Building Schools for the Future, was replaced by the current government with their new approach, relying much more on direct private investment by routes outside the Private Finance Initiative, as well as some funds through the revised method of PFI known as PF2.
However, the BBC reports today that the government minister has conceded there is not enough funding for all of the schools selected for new buildings, with a shortfall of over 100 schools where no money is left. Recent similar reports by the BBC were denied.
Currently the only prospect of funding for these schools will possibly be in a few years time, and relies on other departments of government giving up some of their future capital budget to favour the Department of Education instead.
All of which bodes badly for pupils trying to learn in dilapidated schools in the years ahead, and for the UK construction industry which is still deeply in recession.
Tony Baldwinson 