London will have to return to the age of the tower block estates

The furore over the London borough of Newham's request to a Stoke-on-Trent housing association to house some of its homeless families is just the tip of the iceberg. London's housing problem is of Victorian dimensions and yet scarcely figures on any political agendas and although housing is not the Mayor's responsibility has not featured in the Boris v Ken election campaign.
Just look at the facts. London's population is expanding, driven in part by people moving to it from other parts of the country or more often from other parts of the world in search of jobs and there is not enough housing to satisfy it. In many cases wages do not cover the high price of accommodation.  On top of this because of sterling's weakness global millionaires are snapping up properties in central London thereby driving up prices and having a knock-on effect on rentals. London's private rental market is already a landlords' market. It is hard enough for young, wage-earning single people to find rented property. If you are relying on benefits, especially now the coalition has capped them, then forget it; you cannot live in London on benefits unless your rent is covered by the taxpayer. But that of course then becomes unfair on those who are having to pay for their own rented accommodation.
On the flipside, outside London there are areas such as Stoke where accommodation is cheap. Newham is just one borough which through no fault of its own has run out of housing and money to top up the capped benefits. It is clearly unacceptable for a borough to 'export' its poor to other already poor parts of the country but Newham doubtless argues it is 'thinking outside the box' when it comes to solving this impossible conundrum.
There is clearly a short-term problem exacerbated by the housing benefits cap and the over-heated rentals market. But it is also a macro-problem which this government, and previous ones, has simply failed to address. London is too expensive to live in, there is not enough accommodation, and yet its population, driven by immigration from within the UK and from abroad, continues to rise. We could of course return to the age of tower blocks, which were a social disaster when it came to housing poor families though worked better for the well-off (such as the Barbican estate in the City). Or governments could simply admit that London has become too big while the rest of the UK stagnates and regional policy therefore needs to be urgently kick-started again. Either way - it is time for government to act.

Kensington and Chelsea has a better credit rating than France

Not a lot of people know this but it would be cheaper for the French government to let the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea borrow money on its behalf as the latter has a triple A credit rating while France's was downgraded to AA+ in January. The same applies to Spain and Portugal whose ratings are even worse at A and BB respectively. Woking BC has a better rating than either od those countries at AA-. The UK government, currently at triple A, is terrified it might lose iots rating which of course then affects the cost of its borrowing.
The idea that UK local authorities have a better rating than many national governments, possibly in time even their own, is entertaining but does also underline a serious point. The Localism Act in theory could mean more councils borrowing from banks or bonds rather than simply relying on the Public Works Loan Board which recently has been prone to interference from the Treasury. A recent report by ratings agency Standard and Poor's (which rates Kensington and Chelsea and Woking) says that local government will continue to have good creditworthiness despite cuts and other changes such as taking on housing debt from the Housing Revenue Account.
Yesterday I chaired a panel session at a conference on local government funding with treasurers from various major UK local authorities. All of them complained at the way the government keeps moving the goalposts on PWLB borrowing costs and at the lack of direction from the Treasury about whether it really does want to give councils more powers to go to the money markets for funding or is just keeping Eric Pickles and the DCLG sweet over localism. Judging by the current creditworthiness of councils they would have no trouble getting the cash - and maybe lending some of it back to HM Treasury!

We need SOLACE on Newsnight

Our regular columnist, Sir Stephen Bubb, chief executive of ACEVO, the voluntary sector chiefs association, is quite a media star. He ought to get repeat fees judging by the number of times he has appeared on Newsnight.
He was on again last night, in a discussion chaired by Jeremy Paxman on George Osborne's attack on tax-avoiding millionaires and donations to alleged spurious 'charities' which were merely front operations. Stephen quite rightly gave a robust defence of charities and how Osborne's comments were hitting donations and also demanded evidence of these charities because if they are not above board then they will be dealt with by the Charity Commission.
But my point is not about the discussion but about how the media selects its representatives. Around the table were a Tory MP, someone from the City, someone from the TUC - a pretty good cross-section in other words, for a debate and Stephen is an excellent spokesman for the voluntary sector.
But it occurs to me that if this were a discussion about local government - and there have been plenty in the past few months - would we see a representive from SOLACE on Newsnight? I suspect not. Indeed I don't believe the society has ever been on Newsnight. There are numerous occasions when local government could be represented in such debates - the recent Darra Singh report on the riots, or the welfare reform issue or council tax levels or housing come to mind just from the last few weeks. I don't blame SOLACE. It may be because of the media's lack of interest in councils. But local government needs a meddia-savvy representative like Sir Stephen Bubb to bat for it.