forgiveness is sexy

David Pretty, former Chief Executive of the Barratt Group and one of the best-known figures in British housing provision, has called first time buyers the new poor.

Mr Pretty was Chief Executive of Barratt until his retirement at the end of last year. He was also made a CBE for services to housebuilding in the last Queen’s Birthday Honours List, and is now Chairman of the New Homes Marketing Board.

In a statement that is being sent to Housing Minister, Yvette Cooper, he describes today’s first-time buyers as the new poor and calls on the Government to take ten urgent, radical measures to help them, to strengthen the housing market and to underpin future economic prosperity.

These include speeding up the sale of redundant Government land, fast-tracking planning for affordable housing and brownfield land, mortgage tax relief and the scrapping of Stamp Duty for first-time buyers, and tax relief on parental contributions (full list in attachment).

He said that he would like to point out that the financial incentives included in his 10 point plan would only be implemented once there is clear evidence of an increase in supply, lest they add to price pressure. One way or another, however, today’s aspiring first timers are going to need a tremendous amount of help on a wide front.

London Play, the children’s charity, has applauded Culture Minister, David Lammy for championing the need for more play spaces for children, and for children to have a greater stake in urban planning.

In Making Space for Children, he cites London’s newest adventure playground - the wonderful, lottery-funded Somerford Grove Adventure Playground in my constituency - as an example of what can be achieved.

Lammy said: It is an oasis of child-centred fun, imagination, care and creativity, where adults and children come together to create an environment and a community that reflects the best they each have to offer. We are slowly seeing more places like Somerford Grove thanks to regeneration programmes and targeted lottery funding, often with a focus on inner city communities.

Alan Sutton, Policy Officer at the children’s charity London Play, said: Why can a school in Denmark have no walls or fences round the playground, and encourage locals to walk through it, while here school playgrounds are like a zoo, with a four-metre high fence?It is great to see a politician like David Lammy sticking his neck out and saying what a lot of people in the children’s play field are thinking. We need a debate on how we approach the solutions.

The Government and Mayor of London, Ken Livingston has outlined how the National Lottery and London will benefit from the sale of the Olympic Park land after the Games.

A new Memorandum of Understanding between Tessa Jowell and Mr Livingstone, deposited in the House of Commons library, sets out how the Lottery and the London Development Agency will be paid back using proceeds from the land sale.

The agreement is the formalisation of the commitment made by Tessa Jowell in March that the National Lottery would be repaid from the financial benefits of increased land values in the Lower Lea Valley after 2012 as well as reimbursing the LDA for the purchase of the land and relocation of businesses to create the Olympic Park.
The potential proceeds from the sales are to be shared to allow both the Lottery and LDA to recover all of their investment. In order to allow continuing spend on regeneration and to repay the Lottery good causes, the proceeds will be shared on a staged basis.

After LDA has recovered the initial cost of buying the land, the Lottery will recover 75% of its additional funding (£506m), while the LDA recovers 25% of its outstanding costs (£125m), on a pro rata basis. Then each will recover their remaining costs from subsequent sales, with £169m going to the National Lottery and £375m going to the LDA. This will cover the LDA costs in remediating and clearing the Olympic Park land.

Ms Jowell said: It should give lottery distributors real confidence that the additional funding necessary for a successful Olympic and Paralympic Games will be re-paid - providing them and the whole country with a further 2012 dividend.

Mr Livingstone, said:The new memorandum makes it crystal clear once and for all that the further funding of the 2012 Games agreed between myself and the Secretary of State means Londoners will not have to pay a penny more towards funding the Olympics.