Housing minister Grant Shapps has today pledged nearly £1bn of funding for councils that give planning permission for new housing development.
In the proposals for the New Homes Bonus, which are now open for public consultation, the government will match the council tax raised from new homes for the first six …

The government’s regional growth fund will fail to support regeneration given the scale of public spending cuts, the chief executive of Centre for Cities has said.
Alexandra Jones, head of policy research group Centre for Cities, said at today’s Public Property Summit in London that the £1.4bn regional growth fund was …

Helical Bar chief executive Mike Slade has criticised the government’s five-year moratorium on signing new leases and renewing existing deals.
Slade was talking at the Public Property Summit in London this morning. He said the government’s flagship plan for public sector property leases was too dramatic. Private sector companies face being …

The government’s property tsar John McCready has this morning set out plans to roll out public sector property vehicles across the UK.
McCready, head of the property unit in the Shareholder Executive in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, was making the keynote speech at Property Week and PublicPropertyUK.com’s Public …

The government has today published the draft version of the Public Bodies Bill, which it needs to enable it to carry out its plans for large reform of government quangos.
Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude (pictured) set out plans earlier this month to scrap 192 quangos and reforming a further 289 …

Private sector companies won’t be able to fill the financial gap caused by savage cuts to regeneration budgets, the Local Government Association has warned.
The LGA has responded to the government’s white paper on local growth, published yesterday, by saying that private sector partners will not be able  to make up …

The government will introduce new primary legislation to implement tax increment financing (TIF), allowing local authorities to kick start developments by borrowing against future business rate increases.
As part of a white paper on local growth, published today, the government said it had started a review to decide how the TIF …

The government has given the green light to 24 partnerships between local businesses and councils to replace regional development agencies (RDAs).
Speaking today in parliament, business secretary Vince Cable said that 24 groups of local authorities and private companies had successfully bid over the summer to form so-called local enterprise partnerships, …

The government is set to spend up to £1.4bn over the next four years on regional development agency projects and the cost of dismantling the regeneration bodies.
The government has today confirmed that it will be forced to keep spending on the doomed regional development agencies until 2015. It will also …

The Greater London Assembly has today demanded “urgent clarification” following reports that the London Development Agency was set to lose its £156m non-Olympics budget in the next financial year.
Len Duvall, the chair of the London Assembly’s economic development, culture, sport and tourism committee has written to the mayor’s economic development …