| Dead man lay on roof for 30 days A man lay dead on a church roof in Torquay for 30 days after he fell 80ft down a cliff, an inquest hears. bbc.co.uk |
Mortgage lenders post 8% drop in August new home loans Mortgage lenders' figures appear to contradict government statistics which show UK house prices rose 0.7% in AugustConflicting information about the strength of the housing market was reported today when lenders announced the number of new loans fell 8% in August compared to July but the government's house price index indicated prices had risen month on month.The Council for Mortgage Lenders (CML) said loans to home movers dropped 10% to 33,200 and their average deposit grew from 33% in July to 34% in August, meaning they were borrowing at the lowest loan-to value ratios for six years. The proportion of income spent on interest payments had also dropped marginally (0.1%) month on month to 9.5%, and by 1.9% from August 2009.However, the situation seems to have improved slightly for first-time buyers, who are considered to be the lifeblood of the housing market. Although their numbers also fell 5% to 18,300, the deposits demanded by lenders seemed to have shrunk slightly, meaning they put down an average of 21% in August compared to 24% in July.The number of remortgages fell by 13% to 25,000 loans, while the value fell 14% from July's figure to ÂŁ3bn. This represents just 25% of all mortgage loans in August, the lowest proportion in more than 10 years. Both number and value were down 19% on the same month a year ago. The CML said with interest rates expected to remain low for some time, there is little incentive for borrowers to move away from low reversion rates at the end of tie-in periods. In addition, continuing tight credit conditions mean some borrowers are unable to access refinancing deals, so there is little prospect of a significant rise in remortgaging in the coming months.But the Department for Communities and Local Government's (DCLG) UK house price index contradicted other recent house price surveys by showing prices had risen 0.7% in August after a drop of 0.3% in July. The annual increase had slowed slightly to 8.3% over the year to the end of August, compared to 8.3% in July and a peak of 10.6% in May. This masks great regional variations: in England prices rose 9.3%, Wales 9% and Scotland 0.4%, but in Northern Ireland, prices plummeted 18.8%.Howard Archer, chief UK economist for IHS Global Insight, said: "The 0.7% rise in house prices in August reported by the DCLG is on the face of it at odds with most of the latest housing market data and surveys which have pointed to low activity and softening prices."He said the DCLG figures are for August while most data now being reported is for September, which generally shows a downward trend for the property market, and added: "There is likely to be significant volatility around this gradual overall downward trend. High unemployment, muted wage growth, an increasing fiscal squeeze, low consumer confidence, difficulties in getting a mortgage, a housing supply/demand balance currently firmly in favour of buyers and a house price/earnings ratio above long-term norms are a poor combination of factors for house prices. Low interest rates and the current stamp duty holiday for first-time buyers on all properties costing up to ÂŁ250,000 only partially offset these adverse factors."CML director general, Michael Coogan, said: "August is a traditionally slow month for mortgage lending and it was no different this year. We expect the quiet market to continue for the foreseeable future. While we do not know what the impact of the comprehensive spending review will be on our sector, it will clearly contain austerity measures that will likely further dampen consumers' appetite to borrow."We would expect lending to slow more significantly year on year, as we head towards the end of the year, and it is unlikely that the uncertain environment will encourage a tick up of mortgage activity in 2011. With some uncertainty surrounding future house price trends, we would expect a muted market in the next few years."The problem of excess capital, that led to record lending and borrowing in 2007, has self corrected and will not return."MortgagesPropertyHousing marketReal estateMortgage lending figuresRecessionEconomicsJill Insleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Defence review: see the list of cuts in full The Stragetic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) will shape British military policy for decades. Find out what was announced• Get the dataThe Defence Review is finally out. It's part of a week which sees the release of three important insights into UK defence. Yesterday the National Security Strategy (NSS) outlined the defence department's approach to the risk of attack. Today the Stragetic Defence and Security Reveiw (SDSR) is published, describing the cuts and the spending pledges. The MoD says the Cabinet Office, National Security Council and Home Office have worked together to make the SDSR the most thorough review of defence in over 12 years. What do you think?Of course, tomorrow the public spending review will reveal, amongst other things, the spending cuts for the department for defence.So what does the SDSR tell us about defence resources, what will be kept and what will go?Download the data• DATA: download the full spreadsheet• Search the world's government with our gatewayDevelopment and aid data• Search the world's global development data with our gatewayCan you do something with this data?Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group• Get the A-Z of data• More at the Datastore directory• Follow us on TwitterData summary Defence policyMilitaryPublic financeSpending review 2010Lisa Evansguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Baby P 'resignation' is refused A doctor accused of failing to spot signs that Baby P was being abused has her application to be removed from the medical register rejected. bbc.co.uk |
Tower Hamlets: what next for Labour? The borough's Labour group meets this evening in the serious and unusual setting of Committee Room 18 in the House of Commons. A message accompanying the agenda emailed to those invited says, "We are hoping to have Jim Fitzpatrick, Rushnara Ali and John Biggs in attendance." These people are, of course, the borough's two MPs and its London Assembly member. It could be quite an occasion. The main topic of discussion, needless to say, will be how to respond to the election of Lutfur Rahman as executive mayor of Tower Hamlets. Already, Labour members who wish to declare all out war on him are darkly hinting that some colleagues will be prepared to support him, especially if they are offered places in his cabinet. The name of housing expert Marc Francis is invariably mentioned in this context. Francis hosted the Rahman victory party that followed his short-lived period as Labour's candidate and is known to have been unhappy about Rahman's deselection by Labour's National Executive Committee. The Rahman camp is saying that their man is eager to re-build bridges and bring talented Labour people into his administration, which will probably comprise a deputy mayor plus eight others. It points out that most of the eight Labour Councillors - five women and three men, incidentally - who openly supported him do not have a great deal of experience in local government. Rahman's overture is that he wishes to implement the policy programme Labour had agreed and hopes the party's seasoned elected representatives will assist him in this work. Labour in London has firmly denied reports that its general secretary Ken Clark has warned any who do that they will face expulsion, though it's hard to imagine in these fraught circumstances how the Labour group could function effectively as a unit with some of its members working in the Rahman administration and others devoted to its destruction. Something will have to give. And if Rahman does indeed seek to implement the same policies as Helal Abbas would have done, opposing them will require a lot of ingenuity. They've surely got to have more to offer than anger and allegations about unsavoury connections. There clearly are splits within the local party and disquiet about the handling of the candidate selection process. There's also, I'm told, a bit of tension between the NEC and the London regional party. On Friday I spoke to a key member of the vanquished Helal Abbas campaign, who acknowledged that the defeat had been a "disaster" and said there would be a "serious postmortem," focussing on, among other things, the way the candidate was picked, why the turnout was so (for Labour) fatally low and the failure of the campaign to mobilise either a majority of the politically-active Bangladeshi community which comprises one third of the Tower Hamlets population or enough of its other natural supporters despite a headline theme of "uniting the East End." Significantly, this source said it would be a mistake to "blame it all on Ken and Ken," meaning Mssrs Livingstone and Clark for their respective roles. He said he hoped Livingstone would "pay a heavy price" for accompanying Rahman on the campaign trail but added "he didn't cost us 10,000 votes." He also said he though Clark had stuck to the right principles in his stewardship of the selection process and admitted that Rahman had "turned our attacks on him against us brilliantly." The source also disputed the view that John Biggs, who came second in the candidate ballot, should have been imposed instead of Abbas, who came third, and was passed over on the grounds that a white candidate could not win, saying "it was about seniority." I wouldn't like to be in Labour shoes. If the majority of the Tower Hamlets group refuses to co-operate with Rahman at all it will shut itself out of the running of Tower Hamlets for at least four years, risk looking petty and even shouldering some of the blame should his mayoralty prove as inefficient as some fear. If it chooses to kiss and make up, people will ask what it is doing making friends with a man it so recently vilified as a willing collaborator with sinister extremist infiltrators. It's hard to imagine a tidy ending. There is, though, one thing that Labour's NEC must surely do if it hopes to repair the damage done to its support in Tower Hamlets among Bangladeshi voters. Abbas's allegations against Rahman should be thoroughly investigated by someone quite separate from the Labour Party and the results made public, no matter how uncomfortable they are for the party. Without that, no postmortem will be complete.LondonLondon politicsLocal governmentLocal politicsDave Hillguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |