Friday’s reshuffle saw Margaret Beckett take over as the new housing minister, the third this year. The Guardian says, although it was denied by Downing Street, that Jon Cruddas was initially offered the housing post but turned it down after he was told that he could not start a big housing programme.

Several charities are involved in a high court judicial review today to force the government to stand by promises it made in 2000 to eradicate fuel poverty and help millions of households facing a winter of growing gas and electricity bills. Help the Aged and Friends of the Earth say the government is legally bound by promises it made and legislated on, to abolish fuel poverty by 2016 and eliminate it from the most vulnerable households by 2010. 

Meanwhile Gordon Brown is under pressure to guarantee all savings in British bank accounts after Germany and Denmark become the latest European countries to do so. Alistair Darling has so far raised the guaranteed level of deposits from £35,000 to £50,000, as banks hold around £2 trillion in private and corporate accounts. Today is the first day of the government’s ‘economic council’ and ministers are due to meet. They are said to be angered about the decision made in Germany by Angela Merkal, but will probably follow suit in order to prevent the large-scale flow of capital out of the country.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has warned that the housing target of building two million new homes by 2016 is looking further out of reach than ever as the downturn in the industry is sending growth in the private housing sector to a record low. The government needs to build in excess of 200,000 house each year to reach its target, and to date only 66,000 new homes have been built this year, with predications that the figure will fall below 25,000 per quarter by the end of the year. Following the decline over the past two quarters, the private housing sector workload plummeted again with 60 per cent more surveyors reporting a fall than a rise nthis quarter. Meanwhile the amount of public housing work hit a six-year low also.

But house prices are going to rise again, according to research by the economic consultancy Centre for Economic and Business Research (CEBR). As government targets for the minimum number of new homes being built are not being met, demand will inevitably outstrip supply, fuelling a new boom say CEBR, that may be every bit as large as the current price fall: ‘The sharp drop in completions will mean higher prices if and when the credit markets sort themselves out’.

According to figures obtained by the Mirror, the Ministry of Justice has spent £230 million on hotels and dinners, and just £16 million on upgrading housing for members of the forces. In 2006/07 when these figures were collected, there were 400,000 complaints about housing from army families, while MPs warned that 19,000 houses out of 70,000 married quarters and 165,000 single people’s quarters were in disrepair. A spokesperson from the Army Families Federation said that accommodation was, and still is, sub-standard.

New private house starts are at a 50-year low after orders in the three months to August 2008 fell 33 per cent compared with the previous three months, and 48 per cent year-on-year, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics. Public housing and housing association orders in the three months to August 2008 rose by 13 per cent compared with the previous three months, and increased 10 per cent in year-on-year figures.

The Local Government Association has warned that councils face having to cut jobs and services over the next few months as they try to recoup some of a £1 billion deficit caused by inflation and increasing food and fuel prices. Councils were given three-year budgets last April, but they were based on inflation running at 2.7 per cent, rather than the 4.7 per cent it is currently. This has lead to a £500 million shortfall in each of the next three years. Councils have already had to spend an additional £374 million in fuel costs and £80 million more on school food.

Local authorities in Wales are taking on average 149 days to meet legal requirements over homeless households, up from an average of 113 days in 2006/07. However the research showed that there was a 31 per cent reduction in the number of homeless households living in B&B accommodation, and a 44 per cent fall in the number of homeless households with children in B&Bs. The number of affordable homes created across Wales also fell to seven per cent of new homes, down from nine per cent from the previous year.

Nationwide said that house prices fell for the eleventh consecutive month, down 1.7 per cent last month, the biggest annual drop since their records began. Prices are now 12.4 per cent lower than a year ago, with the average house having lost £23,000 from its value. House prices will continue to fall in the short term, but longer term prospects are ‘more sound’ it said.

According to the Bank of England (BoE) Britain’s banks and building societies are set to make even more cutbacks in their lending, and should expect more defaults from customers on their loans. The BoE also released its housing equity withdrawal figures for the second quarter of the year. Compared with the £5.2 billion worth of equity withdrawn in the first quarter of the year, the second quarter showed that homeowners actually injected £2.8 billion into their housing. This is the largest net injection of equity since records began in 1970.

More than 3.5 million households faced fuel poverty in 2006, one million more than in 2005, and the energy watchdog Consumer Focus says the number currently in fuel poverty could have climbed as high as 5.5 million this year. Defined as households who spend more than 10 per cent of their income on fuel, there are also 2.75 million households in England classed as vulnerable - containing a child, elderly person or someone with a long-term illness - who are in fuel poverty.

From today, all landlords must now give new tenants a certificate showing the rented property’s energy efficiency. The energy performance certificate, providing information similar to the ratings system on home appliances, is intended to allow tenants to check the energy efficiency of a property’s insulation, double glazing, boiler and appliances.

This comes as a new report show that 79 per cent of renters are worried about the cost of their household bills, while 77 per cent don’t believe that their landlords care enough about energy efficiency. After location, household bills are now the most important factor in choosing a property to rent.

New rules have also come into force today allowing homes to be extended without planning permission. As many as 80,000 households will no longer have to seek planning permission for improvements such as loft extensions under 50 cubic metres or putting in permeable driveways. ‘Large or intrusive’ improvements will still require planning permits, however.

Meanwhile home information packs are being investigated by the Trading Standards office in Birmingham, which has found that housebuyers are being misled because information supposed to be found in them is inaccurate, incomplete or missing. Officers went to 15 estate agents and asked to see the Hips for a selection of properties and found the majority were unsatisfactory.

A new report out from the National Housing Federation shows that waiting lists for social housing in the North West have increased 75 per cent in the past five years, more than any other region. Despite falls in house prices, affordability remains a major problem, and nearly half a million people - more than 212,000 households - are now on the region’s waiting list. The document also contains the latest forecast from Oxford Economics anticipating a rise in property prices from 2010, which is likely to worsen the situation even further. 

The Crosby report - looking at ways to kickstart the mortgage market - has been delayed by two weeks to take into account the market turbulence of the past month. An interim report in July has been widely criticised, and the full report is expected to address whether the government should extend the special liquidity loans to banks past January 2009, or guarantee high-quality mortgage-backed securities.

But the report can’t come fast enough for some, as hundreds of mortgage deals vanished yesterday after the report’s delay was announced, and lenders were uncertain about access to sources of finance. In the past few weeks interbank lending has practically dried up and the cost of wholesale borrowing has risen dramatically as a result. Accordingly around 10 per cent of deals were dropped yesterday, adding to the withdrawal in the past year of 85 per cent of buy-to-let mortgages and 60 per cent of residential mortgages.

Millions of children in the UK are living in or on the brink of poverty, defined as households living on less than £10 per person per day. The campaign to End Child Poverty claims that 5.5 million children are in families that are classified as ’struggling’, with 174 out of 646 parliamentary constituencies in Britain having 50 per cent or more of their child population in or close to the poverty line. A spokesperson for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said the government was committed to ending child poverty, but added that local authorities amd other service providers had to help raise family incomes and get parents back to work. 

Grant Shapps launched an attack on the government yesterday at the Conservative Party conference, accusing it of halting social mobility by failing to help people buy their own homes. He said the multi-million pound schemes to help families get on the housing ladder have been an expensive failure, and pledged that a Conservative government would abandon central government targets for house building, cut regulations, and empower local communities to make more of their own decisions on development projects.

Meanwhile shadow chancellor George Osborne has made a surprise announcement saying that council tax bills would be frozen for two years under a Conservative government, saving £210 on average for households. However, local government organisations said that town halls would have to make big cuts in local services, and opponents also pointed out that the poorest third of families would benefit less than middle-income earners.

In Scotland the number of homeless people has dropped by 5 per cent in the past year. However, the number of children being sent to unsuitable accommodation such as B&Bs has almost doubled. In 2007/08 more than 56,000 homeless applications were made to local authorities with the majority of those applying being single people (60 per cent) and a quarter of applications coming from single parents, mostly women. Communities minister Stewart Maxwell said that Scotland was making ‘real progress’ towards the target of abolishing homelessness by 2012, but added there was ’still much work to be done’.

Some good news for the government at last as a major coalition of environmental and social justice organisations support the eco-town programme. The coalition, including Shelter, National Housing Federation, Town and Country Planning Association, Chartered Institute of Housing and Help the Aged, believe that eco-towns would provide homes and places of the ‘highest design and environmental standards’, and affordable housing for tens of thousands of people. The organisations are hoping to broaden the public debate and are calling on local people to get involved in the consultation process to shape the way the towns might look.

A recent survey has found that 29 per cent of renters who have moved in the past 12 months are not part of a tenancy deposit protection scheme, despite it being a legal requirement for landlords. As much as £4 billion of renters’ deposits are at risk, but the research found that 48 per cent of current renters were unaware that such a scheme exists.

The government has confirmed that Bradford & Bingley, the country’s biggest buy-to-let investor, will be part-nationalised. The government will take control of the banks’ £50 billion in mortgages and loans, while the £20 billion savings business and branches will be bought by the Santander group, affecting 2.6 million customers. The move, to ‘provide stability in the UK’s wider financial sector’ will protect savers’ money, however shares which have fallen by 93 per cent this year, were immediately suspended on the announcement. Bradford and Bingley has double the rate of arrears of other lenders.

An investigation by the Sunday Mirror has shown an increase in the number of home repossessions. Debt advisers have seen twice as many homeowners coming to them for help as last year, with some county courts setting aside two days a week to deal with the amount of claims. Birmingham is Britain’s repossession capital with more than 2,000 homes repossessed already this year - up 50 per cent on last year; with Liverpool next up 47 per cent since last year. Debt advisers expect a large jump in the number of homeowners in arrears in the lead up to Christmas.

Mortgage lending virtually stopped in August - falling 95 per cent from July’s figures - and reaching the lowest recorded figure since the Bank of England started collecting the data in 1993. Net lending was only £143 million during August, a fraction of the £3 billion lent in July. Meanwhile the number of mortgage approvals fell to 32,000 last month, down from 33,000 in July, which is marginally higher than analysts forecast, but less than a third of their total in August 2007.

The number of people waiting for affordable housing in rural areas has increased by more than a third over the past five years, according to figures from the National Housing Federation and the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Around 700,000 people were waiting on a house, 37 per cent more than in 2003, while the proportion of homeless households in rural areas has more than doubled from 16 to 37 per cent of the national total. NHF and CPRE want restrictions on the rights of outsiders to buy social housing where there is an acute shortage of houses, and have called on rural planning authorities to set targets for affordable homes.

Residential development land has dropped by a third in value during the past year, and by up to 15 per cent in the past quarter, according to Knight Frank’s first annual land index. The index predicts that values will continue to fall by up 10 per cent during the next 12 months, although there are signs that speculators are entering the market to snap up bargains, as they now represent a fifth of the buying activity nationally and 50 per cent in London. The fall in value has come about as developers have had to put their land acquisitions on hold, reducing demand for the sites by as much as 60 per cent in parts of the country.

Home sellers are being forced to accept offers on average 9 per cent lower than their asking price, with the gap growing as the property market downturn worsens, according to the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors. The smallest gap between the asking and selling prices was in homes in Scotland, while the largest gap was in the north of England were the gap was 12.5 per cent.

And finally, a council has apologised after threatening elderly residents with eviction and jail for feeding ducks outside their homes. East Riding council in Yorkshire has sent letters to tenants of a sheltered housing complex advising that feeding the birds was causing a nuisance to other residents, and those feeding the birds were breaking their tenancy agreements. The council has said the letters were too heavy handed under the circumstances.