Don’t cut London’s affordable housing quotas, Labour MPs urge ministers and mayor

Labour MPs are urging ministers and the London mayor to drop controversial plans to reduce affordable housing quotas in the capital in order to boost homebuilding.MPs have said they are concerned about the proposals being drawn up by the housing secretary, Steve Reed, and the mayor, Sadiq Khan, in response to a sudden drop in new development in the capital.Reed and Khan are considering allowing builders to qualify for fast-track planning approval while promising to build 20% affordable homes, rather than the current minimum of 35%. Labour MPs hope to use the next few weeks before the package is formally announced to persuade them not to do so.Florence Eshalomi, the Labour chair of the housing select committee, said: “Solving the housing crisis relies not just on how many new homes we build, but also on their affordability

Will affordable housing be the casualty as London tackles its building emergency?

Sadiq Khan has known for a while that he has a problem with housebuilding in London. But last week a consultancy published figures about the scale of the problem, which prompted full-scale alarm in City Hall and Whitehall.The analysis from Molior showed that new housebuilding in the capital had collapsed. Only 40,000 homes are under construction – two-thirds the normal rate – and in the first three months of the year builders started work on just 3,248 private sector units.“It is a perfect storm of economic conditions impacting housebuilding,” said one City Hall source

Dr Jill Tattersall obituary

My mother, Jill Tattersall, who has died aged 95, helped to change the face of healthcare by co-founding a clinic providing contraception for unmarried women and underage girls in the 1960s.She qualified as a doctor in Sheffield in 1956 and started out by training in obstetrics and gynaecology, quickly moving into the new field of family planning. During the 60s, birth control supplied by the NHS was only for married women and there was still a great deal of stigma attached to premarital sex and underage relationships.Seeing this gap in the service Jill, along with some other concerned professionals, bought a terrace house in 1966 and set up the 408 Young People’s Consultation Centre on Ecclesall Road in Sheffield. It was converted into a clinic to provide psychological and counselling services to young women, and also contraception, unavailable to unmarried women and underage girls within the mainstream health service until 1974

This gift to housebuilders from Labour is shameful | Letters

The leaked memo circulated in the housing ministry confirms our worst fears: this Labour government is abandoning its promises on affordable housing (A leaked memo, a Maga-style hat and a trail of broken pledges – it’s Labour’s great housing betrayal, 15 October). It’s a slap in the face for people who are crying out for homes they can afford to live in.The plan to shower large property developers with public subsidies is an astonishing misuse of taxpayer money. At a time when public services are on their knees, the government proposes to use scarce public funds to boost the profits of highly successful private companies. We already see this in Liverpool, where the Labour council allows private developers to avoid paying much needed section 106 money because they argue that their schemes become “unviable”

Sue Barker obituary

My wife, Sue Barker, who has died aged 79 of pancreatic cancer, devoted her life to protecting and improving the lives of vulnerable children. Over more than five decades in social work she brought her fierce integrity to some of the toughest cases in England and Wales.Born in the village of Royston, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Sue was the youngest of three children. Her father, Alexander Willett, was a coal miner; her mother, Eleanor (nee Cheetham), had been in domestic service.After leaving Normanton girls’ high school, Sue became a “house mother” in a boys’ home in Batley, providing love and safety

Betfred says gambling tax rise in budget will force it to shut all its UK shops

Betfred has said it will close all 1,287 of its high street betting shops if Rachel Reeves raises taxes on the gambling industry in next month’s budget.The company’s threat comes amid speculation that the chancellor is considering a tax increase worth up to £3.2bn on sports betting to help to close a potential £30bn shortfall in the public finances.Betfred said such a tax increase would ultimately force all its shops to close, putting 7,500 jobs at risk.Fred Done, the billionaire chair who co-founded Betfred with his brother in 1967, told the BBC: “If [the tax rate] went up to anywhere like 40%, or even 35%, there is no profit in the business