Empty houses get £91m refurbishment

[celeste]

Empty and derelict houses to get £91m refurbishment Don Foster visited houses in Stoke-on-Trent which are being sold for £1  Continue reading the main story Related Stories

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Towns and cities in England are to be given £91m to revamp 6,000 derelict and empty homes, the government has said.
It said the money was being given to areas outside London where empty houses had led to problems such as squatting and falling house prices.
Housing groups and councils applied for a share of the money in November 2012.
Communities minister Don Foster made the announcement on a visit to Stoke-on-Trent, where empty houses are being sold for £1.
Mr Foster said: "The government is doing everything possible to tackle the problem of empty homes and urban blight.
"This will bring people, shops and jobs back to once abandoned areas, and provide extra affordable homes we so badly need."
Ten point review
He said £61m would come from the Empty Homes Funding programme, £41m of which would be allocated by the Homes and Communities Agency to registered social landlords and community and voluntary groups.
Areas including Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Middlesbrough would refurbish 3,500 empty homes with £30m from the Clusters of Empty Homes programme, he said.
 Continue reading the main story Top five areas for empty homes funding

Greater Manchester Combined Authority £10,546,973

Blackburn-with-Darwen Council (Pennine Lancashire) £9,479,806

Hull City Council £7,636,968

Thanet District Council, Kent £4,430,923

Barrow-in-Furness Borough Council, Cumbria £3,442,435

Source: Department for Communities and Local Government

Mr Foster is also urging councils to sign up to restoration expert George Clarke's ten point review for housing regeneration areas.
It supports schemes such as the one in Stoke-on-Trent in which 35 empty homes are being sold by the city council for £1.
The houses in the Portland Street area of Cobridge were due to be demolished and the area redeveloped until the government Pathfinder scheme was scrapped.
While visiting the houses, Mr Foster said the £1 initiative would help to "reinvigorate the community."
He said: "A very significant amount of this money will benefit the Midlands and North, including towns that saw whole areas that become abandoned and 'no go' by the previous government's Pathfinder programme of demolitions that we have put a stop to."

[Cupcake]

£15,000 or so per house.  That doesn't sound a lot of money if there are things like damp or a duff roof to tackle, does it? 

[Adsum]

 Close to where I live there are four streets of terraced houses. About ten years ago they were all renovated by I suspect a local housing association. Shortly afterwards the ones that weren't privately owned were boarded up with steel shutters and have remained that way until recently. They are now being filled with recently arrived immigrants. I am not having a racist rant. I am just curious as to why they were allowed to remain empty for a number of years after being renovated. Despite numerous attempts by people living close to the streets  making enquiries regarding what was happening to them, nobody could ever get a satisfactory answer.

[celeste]

The bedroom tax which means people who live on their own in a three-bedroomed council house have to pay for having extra empty bedrooms, is intended to free up housing for the less affluent - or is  it to provide accommodation for the Romanians and Bulgarians who are expected over here next year?

[Adsum]

I don't believe there would be a housing shortage if successive spineless governments would have tackled the problem early on. There can't be anybody who objects to genuine cases of persecuted people being given sanctuary in this country. However it can't be fair to see millions of people from all over the world flooding here who have never paid a penny into our system, and in many cases being  allotted houses over the heads of people who may have had their names on a housing list for years. People who have travelled through half a dozen EU countries in some instances to turn up on our doorstep claiming asylum from fear of persecution. What was wrong with the first "Safe country they arrived at if they were so afraid"?
 
 The answer is they know we all have MUG stamped across our foreheads. We have officials who will roll out the red carpet for them, and bend over backwards to help them claim every benefit going. I know this to be true because when I worked as a cabby the company I worked for had a contract with Manchester council housing department. There are massive warehouses in Manchester full of everything from toilet rolls to light bulbs, to furniture, Everything a person would need to move into a house. I have spent many countless days ferrying council workers around, filling my cab with small household items to be delivered to a home prior to somebody moving in. Even the council workers charged with ensuring everything was in place before a tenant moved in used to shake their heads at this.
 
I don't blame the immigrants for a second for wanting a better life for their families. I would probably have done the same in their circumstances. I DO however blame the people at the top who allowed the situation to happen where one of the most tolerant nations in the world is becoming the dustbin of Europe. Have any of you seen what is happening in London recently? Squatter camps in Hyde park and the old Hendon football ground. Because these poor wretches are  living in filth, having been misled that the streets of London truly are paved with gold.
 
 It's bad enough when our own natural born citizens who have never worked or paid a penny in tax or insurance seem to think that the answer to a free and easy life is to become baby breeding factories who think that they only have to churn out numerous kids by numerous fathers to get a free house and all the benefits that go with it. without it becoming a free for all to the extent that I sometimes think that I am living in a foreign land.
 
 
Don't give me that guff MR/Mrs politician about they are making a valuable contribution to our society by doing the jobs our own people won't do. Who did the jobs before  the influx of immigrants? Did the crops lie rotting in the fields because there was nobody to pick them, or did our hospitals shut down because we didn't have the staff to keep them open? I don't think so. We have all been subdued into remaining silent for fear of being called racists. In the meantime parts of our country are being turned into mini little foreign countries.
 
Rant over, I'll get me coat. Will the last one leaving what was once Great Britain, turn off the lights.   

[Wytchfynder]

That's cultural Marxism for ya matey.  great innit? 

[Adsum]

That's cultural Marxism for ya matey.  great innit? 

 
We are all equal. However it would seem that some are more equal than others. 

[Wytchfynder]

Yup. and if youre a white Christian working heterosexual male youre in for a long wait for your slice  of the equality pie. I don't think they've completely forgotten us though 

[Adsum]

Yup. and if youre a white Christian working heterosexual male youre in for a long wait for your slice  of the equality pie.

 
 
I know and have friends from a number of ethnic backgrounds and religions who are just as concerned about the flood of immigrants arriving in this country in the last 10 years. It's not the race or religion that concerns most people, it's the sheer quantity arriving virtually overnight. Regardless of what the politicians may say, we are not prepared for the influx we are seeing. We just haven't got the infrastructure in place to support it.
 
This country has a proud tradition of welcoming oppressed minorities and rightly so. Many of whom have gone on to enrich this country by the stint of their sheer hard work and expertise. However when you see and read about the economic migrants, pickpockets, intimidating beggars and thieves arriving in their droves, with no more thought about integrating than the man in the moon, yet fully ready to exploit our social and welfare system that is when I get angry. I can't believe I am typing these words. 10 years ago I would have been incensed to hear anybody decrying the immigrant way of life. Yet today I have no qualms about expressing my views.
 
The thing that frightens me is I imagine this is how the situation felt with regard to the Jewish people in pre war Germany. I dread to think that we are moving slowly down that path, but you only have to read some of the comments that are allowed to get through by the censors on certain forums to see that there are people amongst us who wouldn't see it as a particular problem.

[Cupcake]

I want the EU idiocy on unlimited migration shot down.  Unregulated entry to the country is a damn stupid idea.   

[Wytchfynder]

And whats with the NHS & others scouring the world for people and recruiting nurses from the Philippines and gawd knows where else? That kind of thing just closes the door on future job opportunities for the younger generation.  Are we seriously to believe that we don't have enough young women around with the 'right stuff' to become nurses? Its all cobblers.

[Cupcake]

No male nurses then?     I believe that a lot of nurses trained in the NHS promptly bog off to the private sector, agency work and overseas for the better pay that is ironically offered because the tax-payer-funded training they have had is respected worldwide.   Time to insist that doctors and nurses remain within the NHS system for a reasonable length of time after qualification/training?   

[Adsum]

I have had misgivings for a long time about employing medical staff from overseas, particularly from third world country's. Surely if they are coming from third world country's, their own country and people by definition need them more than we do? I understand that they are chasing the money, but surely, morally for every Doctor and Nurse who comes here from somewhere like Nigeria for instance, it would be better if they stayed at home and nursed their fellow country men and women?
 
 
The same applies to Cupcakes reasoning. If this country has invested thousands in training Doctors and Nurses, then surely there should be some restriction to ensure they work in the NHS for a period of time to enable them to repay the cost of some or all of their training?

[celeste]

Yes John, I thought that was the original intention for them to come here for training and then return to their country of origin to use their acquired knowledge for the benefit of their fellow countrymen

[Cupcake]

My friend's daughter wanted to be an Army medic and the deal there was that they paid your way through training and then you owed them a defined number of years of service.  On full pay, as an Officer, no catches - just a period of service to give them the benefit of the training they funded.   Seemed fair to me.