Housing

  • Zero-carbon homes webinar

    A video of Ian Pritchett's talk and Q&A is on YouTube

    26 May 2020

    A talk about the innovative work of Greencore Construction and how housebuilding can and must change to help tackle the climate crisis.

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  • Home Truths by Liam Halligan – a book review

    By Peter Thompson, Oxford Civic Society Housing Policy Group

    18 May 2020

    Halligan is an economist by training, principally involved in journalism. His book was written in the Autumn of 2019 and his central argument is that we must radically reform the supply side of UK housebuilding … particularly the opaque and deeply disfunctional market for land.

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  • Homelessness in Oxford

    A talk given on 27 September 2018

    29 September 2018

    Homelessness and in particular rough sleeping appears to be on the increase in Oxford but is a complex issue to address. In a well-attended talk on 27 September Simon Bennett, Partnerships Officer at the City Council, spoke about the issues and how the Council, working jointly with other agencies, is attempting to tackle them.

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  • Assessing Housing Need

    OCS's response to the Government's proposals

    12 November 2017

    This note summarises the Civic Society's response to the DCLG paper: “Planning for the right homes in the right places”, which proposes a new formula for assessing housing need in local authority areas. We support the principle that a clear, logical method for assessing housing need is necessary to avoid different interpretations and endless bickering over numbers, but this paper is so flawed that we can only be highly critical.

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  • OCS Response to Housing White Paper

    Our response to "Fixing Our Broken Housing Market"

    27 April 2017

    The Housing Policy Group has written a response to the White Paper. We take issue with the White Paper's opening statement "The housing market in this country is broken, and the cause is very simple: for too long, we haven’t built enough homes”. We argue that there are many other factors contributing to the failure to build enough homes.

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  • New Powers to Fine Rogue Landlords

    We cautiously welcome the Council’s pledge to crack down on rogue landlords.

    22 April 2017

    We cautiously welcome Oxford City Council’s pledge to crack down on rogue landlords (reported in The Oxford Mail on 14 April). The Council will be able to impose fines of up to £30,000 under new powers brought in under the Housing and Planning Act 2016. But driving out irresponsible landlords is not as simple as it sounds.

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  • New Housing Group set up

    First meeting of new Housing Policy Group sets agenda

    5 February 2017

    The first meeting of our new Housing Policy Group happened on 3 February. They identified many issues at national, regional and local level for possible future discussion.

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