Inside Housing has launched a new podcast series featuring debate and discussion on the week’s housing news.
The Housing Podcast is available as a free download from insidehousing.co.uk, Soundcloud, iTunes and most other podcast hubs.
Episodes already recorded and available online include interviews with David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, and guest appearances from organisations including the Royal Town Planning Institute and London Councils (scroll down for full details of all episodes to date)
This week’s episode, which is available here, features audio recorded from the National Housing Federation Finance Conference in Liverpool and the MIPIM Property Conference in Cannes.
Emma Maier, editor of Inside Housing, said: “We’re excited to be adding a new string to the bow of Inside Housing’s content.
“In these busy times, not everyone can sit down to read the magazine from cover to cover, so we hope the podcast will prove a great way for busy readers to catch up on the go.
“We also hope it will offer something new and different for our regular readers and as ever we’re always keen to hear views from the sector on how you would like it to work.”
Episodes of The Housing Podcast are 30 minutes long, and will be released online on Friday afternoons.
You can also sign up for a weekly email bulletin of the latest episode (see below)
The podcast was piloted with a pool of sector figures for a month before its launch.
Review of the year 2019
As the year draws to an end, The Housing Podcast team wraps up the last 12 months, battles it out in a housing quiz, and looks ahead to 2020.
What did the Grenfell Inquiry phase one report say?
This week, Sir Martin Moore-Bick published his Phase One report from the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017. The 838-page report focuses on the events of that dreadful night: how the blaze started, how it spread so ferociously through the building, and how organisations including the emergency services responded.
Sir Martin has also produced recommendations aimed at preventing similar disasters from happening again. Our team has spent the last few days picking through the report, and in this episode of The Housing Podcast, we discuss the key points.
As Boris Johnson takes over at Number 10 Downing Street and appoints his new cabinet, the Housing Podcast team present their first ever 'emergency' episode, looking at whether he is set to shift the housing policy dial back towards home ownership.
The Homes Fit for Human Habitation Act is on the statute book. But what is it for? What does it do? And will it work?
Karen Buck MP, who guided the bill through parliament, along with housing lawyers Giles Peaker and Justin Bates – who wrote it – sit down with The Housing Podcast to answer all this and more.
Theresa May scraps the cap: what does it mean?
To the delight of councils across the country, Theresa May announced this week that she will scrap the Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap.
With the help of Eamon McGoldrick of the National Federation of ALMOs, in this week’s episode of The Housing Podcast we discuss the history of this contentious area of housing policy and look at what happens now.
The true cost of homelessness
Inside Housing has conducted in-depth research into the amount councils are spending on temporary accommodation for homeless people, with shocking results.
In this episode of The Housing Podcast, we take a look at the financial aspect of homelessness and discuss the figures with Matt Downie, director of policy and external affairs at Crisis.
Rating the Social Housing Green Paper
The Housing Podcast team is joined by David Pipe from the Chartered Institute of Housing and housing columnist Jules Birch to rank the proposals in the Social Housing Green Paper out of 10. Edited by Luke Barratt.
Listen or download here:
The supported housing saga
The government’s announcement this week that it will drop plans to change the way supported housing is funded brings to a close a nearly three-year cycle of lobbying against these proposals.
This week, The Housing Podcast looks back at this story, which began with a throwaway line in George Osborne’s Autumn Statement in 2015.
A brief history of council housing
In this week’s episode of The Housing Podcast we speak to John Boughton, social historian and author of Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing, about the five phases of local authority housing – starting in the East End of London in 1900.
Who has been the best housing minister since 2010?
The Housing Podcast team gets together to rank all the housing ministers of the modern Tory era, from Grant Shapps to Dominic Raab. There are a lot of them. Edited by Luke Barratt.
Listen or download here:
The Hackitt Review
This week, Dame Judith Hackitt released the findings of her building regulations review, commissioned by the government in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire last June.
Featuring an interview with Dame Judith, the team takes a look at what was in the report – and why some people were less than impressed.