Organisation: UK DCLG
The end of meddling?
Eric Pickles has announced that he will abandon plans to charge people for their use of waste collection services (the "bin tax"). He will use the "carrot" of rewarding people with vouchers for the volume of recyclable material they produce…
Pickles' rubbish economics
Here is Cameroonian Conservatism in action. If people are inclined to avoid paying for goods, get taxpayers to pay for them, so they appear to be "free" at the point of consumption, in order to reduce the temptation to commit unlawful acts…
The dark side of HIPs
Home Information Packs. A completely useless, expensive pieces of government bureaucracy. And now it seems they were devised, in part, by a man with a clear conflicts of interest - according to a National Audit Office study. It had…
The HIPs loophole
So after all the fuss, u-turns, backtracking, re-packaging, delays, spin and farce it seems that HIPs may not be enforceable after all! That is right, even if the government does go ahead with its pseudo-implementation on 1st August…
When you've dug yourself into a hole you should stop digging
So yesterday, as promised, Ruth Kelly outlined the plans for the implementation of HIPs. All houses with four or more bedrooms will be required to have them from August 1st, then it will be a phased implementation with three bedroom houses…
Brown's Britain - talent is nothing, the inner circle is everything
The HIPs saga rumbles on. The latest is the news that the government may well be getting sued over the whole matter. That is to say, we are going to have pay for their incompetence if legal action goes ahead - because there is no chance…
Unintended consequences of discrimination legislation
It is a general rule that legislation often has the opposite effect to that intended, and that government action usually hurts most those that it is intended to help. We have a beautiful example reported in The Times today. One consequence…
HIPS: A nice little earner (not for us though)
The Home Improvement Pack (HIP) disaster is slowly coming to the boil. The Law Society believes that Home inspectors could make up to £250 million a year on producing packs that never get used! If a property has been on the market for…
Not so HIP
The government is determined to force home owners to pay more than £200 for a green energy certificate when they put their house on the market. HIPs (Home Information Packs) which will be obligatory from June this year, will rate houses…
Blue plaques for trees
The Tree Council is calling for historic trees to be awarded "blue plaques" like historic buildings, concerned that "historic trees are left to wither and die". Are blue plaques (or something equivalent) supposed to stop trees from…