Archives for April 2007
Councils’ scheme raises recycling rates
Councils that have introduced an alternate week bin collection scheme have succeeded in raising recycling rates, a report from the Local Government Association (LGA) shows.
The top ten councils with the highest recycling rates in the UK have all adopted the scheme, which sees the council collecting general rubbish one week followed by the recycling bin the next.
Eight out of ten of the most improved regions use this method and on average 30 per cent of household waste is recycled in councils which run the scheme.
Councils who have not adopted the scheme, collecting only rubbish every fortnight, have the much lower average recycling rate of 23 per cent.
Sandy Bruce Lockhart, chairman of LGA, said: “Councils are listening to local residents and taking action over their concerns about protecting the environment and helping tackle climate change.
“The move by some to alternate weekly bin collections is aimed at working with residents to reduce waste, increase recycling and slowing rising costs from EU legislation and higher landfill tax,” he added.
The UK throws away more landfill waste than any other country in Europe, with landfills now equalling an area the size of Warwick.
South-west’s housing plans examined
The south-west is having its housing plans examined at a planning discussion this week.
The level of housing in the south-west is one of several major topics of discussion, whose overall focus is the region’s long term plan.
Factors that influence the number of houses being built in the region will be considered.
Another issue bring addressed is whether the Draft Regional Spatial Strategy reflects the appropriate economic and population forecasts.
Participants invited by the panel to take part this week include Shelter, Campaign to Protect Rural England, Confederation of British Industry, Home Builders Federation, South West England Regional Development Agency and local authorities from the south-west.
This is the second week of the hearings, which are taking place at the Thistle Hotel in Exeter.
They are part of the Examination in Public (Eip), which runs until Friday July 6th.
Members of the public and the media can observe at the Eip, but only invited participants will be allowed to speak.
The South West Regional Assembly is a partnership of Councillors from 51 Local Authorities and includes representatives from various industry sectors.
Douglas appointed housing chief
Steve Douglass has been appointed as acting chief executive of the Housing Corporation.
From July 2nd he will replace Jon Rouse, who leaves the corporation at the end of June.
Mr Douglas, who is currently the Housing Corporation’s deputy chief executive, first joined the corporation in April 2001 as the director of investment and regeneration for London.
In September 2004 he became field director for London following a change in the corporation’s organisational structure.
Two other appointments are also being made: Peter Marsh will become deputy chief executive with responsibility for resources and regulation and Richard Hill will become director of investment.
Housing Corporation chairman Peter Dixon said: “Steve brings a wealth of housing association sector experience to this crucial role within the Housing Corporation, in addition to his proven track record as Housing Corporation deputy chief executive.
“The board and I look forward to working with him as he leads the corporation through the exciting challenges that lie ahead,” he added.
The Housing Corporation is responsible for investing in new affordable homes and regulating over 1,500 housing associations across England.
Public sector workers can’t afford housing
A new report has claimed that a large proportion of key public sector workers are not in a position to buy their own home.
The study by Halifax found that 70 per cent of towns in the UK are out of the price range for the five key public sector workers groups: nurses, police officers, fire fighters, paramedics and teachers.
This figure is up from 65 per cent for March last year and almost double the 36 per cent mark recorded in 2002.
Nurses were found to be having the most difficult time of it, with 99 per cent of towns in the UK out of the question as a place to buy a home.
Tim Crawford, the group economist at Halifax, commented: “Housing affordability continues to deteriorate for key workers across Great Britain and it is now clearly not a problem confined to the south of England.
“The government’s key worker schemes are providing some relief but given recent trends there would clearly be benefits from broadening their reach.”
Affordability was found to be at its worst in London and the south-west of the country, with Truro having seen one of the largest deteriorations in this regard during the past five years.
UK should take advantage of construction skills base
The UK construction industry has been told that it must better utilise the region’s construction skills base.
The general secretary of the construction workers’ union UCATT, Alan Ritchie, has said that the industry must look to the skills base of British citizens rather than opting for the quick fix method of employing cheap labour from eastern Europe.
In an interview with the BBC, he said that there were “thousands” of young people in Britain that were keen to enter the construction industry but were not being provided with the opportunity.
“If you want skilled labour for the future the best way is to actually train [people] in this country”, he said.
“We took in 40,000 applications from youngsters in the UK that wanted to be joiners, painters, craftsmen in the industry, and we could only find 9,000 [jobs for them],” he added.
Mr Ritchie stated that the current situation of employment of eastern European employees was “21st century slave labour”, whereby workers are classed as self-employed, taken out of contracts, not offered sick pay or pension schemes.
A new influx of Romanian and Bulgarian workers is expected following their introduction to the EU in January.
£30m project to house beleaguered London families
The winning boroughs in the government’s £30 million project to help families move from temporary accommodation into settled homes have been announced.
The Settled Homes Initiative will see the boroughs of Brent, Bromley, Ealing, Hackney and Westminster offered the opportunity to buy 900 homes to convert into social housing through the use of housing benefit money.
It is hoped that the project will provide families forced to live in unsettled and expensive private accommodation with a stable home.
The minister for housing, Yvette Cooper, said: “This new funding means councils will be able to do more to help London families who have been homeless move into a settled home.”
She added that the project will also allow “families to put down roots in the community and help them to overcome the barriers to work and education that people in temporary accommodation often face”.
A total of 20 bids were submitted from London boroughs for the funding.
New means for communities to tackle anti-social behaviour
The government has unveiled a swathe of new programmes with which local authorities can tackle anti-social behaviour.
As part of a promise to deliver 53 Family Intervention Projects (FIPs), targeting upwards of 1,500 families across England each year, the latest selection of initiatives include plans to isolate the most disruptive neighbours and prevent them from repeat offences.
FIPs are designed to challenge the behaviour of the worst local residents, before they face losing their home or the threat of their children being placed in care and lessen the impact of serious interventions, which can cost the taxpayer between £250,000 and £350,000 per family per year.
The projects include interventional social, housing, court, policing and children’s services and form part of the Respect Programme, coordinated for the government by Louise Casey.
“I am delighted that today we can announce that there are 53 Family Intervention Projects across the country to work with the most difficult and anti-social families,” she said.
“These families can cause untold misery to those who have to live alongside them and destroy entire neighbourhoods with their frightening and disruptive behaviour.”
Sustainable Homes Code goes live
The government’s Code for Sustainable Homes is going live this week as the UK seeks to reduce its carbon emissions.
The code, which was first published on 13 December, sets out a means of measuring whether the government has met its target of making all new homes carbon-free by 2016.
In conjunction with the new regulations, the building industry is receiving technical guidance on how to meet the code requirements and on how a code assessment can be obtained.
Communities and local government minister Angela Smith said: “Homes account for more than a quarter of carbon emissions and it is vital that we act now to tackle climate change from as many fronts as possible.
“Building the right type of sustainable homes for future generations is one way in which we can help achieve a 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050.
“This guidance explains to the building industry, but also crucially to the public, how new homes can deliver real environmental improvements in key areas like water and energy use”, she added.
Ways of cutting down on waste water and homeowner running costs will also be included in the guide.
Barriers to would be Councillors examined
A new commission will examine the barriers that prevent a wider range of candidates from standing at local council elections.
The Commission on Local Councillors will seek to define issues that discourage people from taking on jobs as councillors, such as difficulty getting time off work, balancing the role with home responsibilities, pay, and restrictions on who can become a councillor.
It will also ask what more can be done to attract candidates from under-represented groups such as women, younger people and black and minority ethnic (BME) communities.
Currently just four per cent of councilors are BME and the average age of a councilor is 58.
Commission chair and former Leader of Camden Council Dame Jane Roberts said: “Councillors shape our daily lives which is why the Commission’s work to examine ways of encouraging a wider range of people to be able to be elected as councillors … is so important.
“Our work will crucially look at the barriers that prevent every day people becoming councillors”, she added.
The commission will collect evidence from present and former councillors as well as a range of other public sector workers including school governors, tenant representatives and employees from health bodies and voluntary and community organisations.
Local council elections take place across the UK on May 3.
Unique partnership set to transform social housing recruitment
A unique partnership set to transform the way in which talent is recruited into the social housing sector has been launched this week.
Six major social housing organisations have joined forces with top web based talent management technology providers, JGP (publishers of Jobsgopublic.com) to provide MyHousingCareer.com, a specialist jobsboard and career service for the social housing sector.
The launch partners are:
Shelter – the housing and homeless charity;
Housing 21 – a major national provider of services for older people;
Genesis Housing Group – homes/services provider across London;
Estuary Housing Association – housing provider in Essex and London;
Homes for Islington – ALMO managing Islington’s rented/leasehold houses
The Notting Hill Housing Group – one of the UK’s largest housing associations
As well as improving service delivery and reducing time and cost per hire, the partnership will enable the housing sector to work collaboratively to develop new recruitment channels and strategies to bring in talented people from the private sector as well as attracting a more diverse workforce, from the BME community, people with disabilities and women – all currently under represented.
The strong collective employer brand will attract a greater flow of talent into the sector and by working together the various organisations can ensure that talented, yet currently unsuccessful candidates, can be nurtured for the future.
Will Fuller, Resourcing Manager for Housing 21 said: “By working collaboratively rather than competitively we can take advantage of economies of scale, can think more strategically and can be more innovative as an employer, sharing best practice and ideas for the benefit of the sector as a whole”.
“Working as a launch partner gives us the opportunity to raise our profile and enables us to have a better understanding of sector wide recruitment issues while using the jobsboard to find suitable solutions”, said Mark Keeble, Deputy Director of HR for Genesis Housing Group.
Jayne Hilditch, Director of Corporate services at Notting Hill is enthusiastic about the partnership. “Notting Hill is an ambitious organisation and we want the best staff to help us deliver our vision. This kind of co-operative Thinking Big is just what the sector needs. We want to nurture and promote talented people to benefit of the whole sector.”
The benefits of MyHousingCareer.com include:
On-line application forms
A daily vacancies e-mail to active jobseekers
Straightforward, accessible and user friendly processes
An automated candidate feedback facility and
Shorter recruitment timescales greatly enhancing efficiency and affordability
JGP’s Founder, Richard Tyrie said: “This unique partnership will enable us to address skills shortages in the social housing sector by sharing talent across organisational boundaries and developing talent pools. We will be able to modernise and streamline the recruitment process, reach a diverse audience and cut costs. A real win, win for all”.
Notes to editors:
JGP has been working with the public and not-for-profit sectors helping them access wider and more diverse sources of jobseekers since 1998, with the fourth generation of the Jobsgopublic network attracting more than 600,000 jobseekers a month and listing more than 50,000 vacancies a year.
Starting life as a “jobs board”, JGP now provides web-based talent management solutions that help organisations attract, hire, develop and retain talented people at a fraction of the cost of using paper-driven processes and print-media advertising.
Since 1999, JGP has provided these services to more than 1000 public sector employers – the majority in local government.
Delivered in the spirit of collaboration and to support public sector agendas, JGP’s solutions promote efficiency, diversity, social inclusion, to enable citizen-centric self-service, to support work in regards the Data Protection Act, the DDA and web accessibility obligations, e-government principles and e-GIF requirements.
JGP’s technology enables organisations to operate faster, more transparently and much more affordably.