Streetwise

The department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) continues to spin announcements that are not backed up by reality. As I describe in a piece on newstatesman.com, they have made what could be a landmark commitment to end rough sleeping by 2012 but put no new money or ideas into the task.

Rather worryingly, CLG has now scrapped the idea of a national (England) estimate of the number of rough sleeping after the headline figure refused to drop in the last five years. Many of the measures trailed in CLG's press release are not stood up by its "action plan".

Eco-town decision delayed

It looks as if the government's department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) is going to be late with another of its headline announcements, this time on eco-towns.

CLG had promised to publish two key papers this month, a draft planning policy statement and a sustainability assessment of the remaining eco-town bids. But a source has told me that they will not be published until early October - after the Conservative conference - at the earliest. A CLG spokesman has told me that "we have no date for the announcement but it will be at some stage in the coming few weeks", which translates as don't hold your breath.

My source suggests that the delay is caused by a desire to make the papers as robust as possible, given the threat of court challenges. Last week, the BARD campaign won the right to take the whole eco-town process to judicial review.

The "September" announcement has already been downgraded after it became clear that the actual selection of eco-town bids will not happen until early next year - or is that sometime next year?

All the fun of the fair market

The government's latest housing market plans haven't gone down too well. From the Telegraph calling it a symbolic gesture to others, like the Times, saying it was overshadowed by a recession warning from the OECD, they've hardly been a hit.

The department for Communities and Local Government issued a press release entitled "Ensuring a fair housing market for all", which seems a bit fanciful. What I don't get is this: if giving help (like a stamp duty holiday and equity loans) to first time buyers will help support the housing market, how does that help first time buyers? Surely price falls are the best way to help them?

The other heavily-spun measure is

£100m investment to support SMI [Support for Mortgage Interest] reform which could help prevent a further 10,000 repossessions

This raises the question that if helping people earlier who are struggling to pay their mortgages can prevent repossessions, why didn't the government do it earlier? There's also the usual Brown spin in preventing what is essentially an extended welfare benefit as "investment to support reform".