The rollout of coverage of ultrafast internet by Digital Home is accelerating with fourteen thousand homes to be added in the next couple of months as the rollout in the north of Portsmouth gains pace.

A useful document for other local authorities, businesses and interested parties to use as a base for education, planning and understanding of how to get houses (both new and existing) to 'Net Zero' has been jointly produced by West Oxfordshire District Council, Cotswold District Council and the Forest of Dean Council.

The All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) For Healthy Homes and Buildings met this month, primarily to discuss updating the Decent Homes standard for the Social Rented Sector but one of the outcomes could be greater regulation of the Private Rented Sector (PRS).

Commissioned by the Greater London Authority and written by the Carbon Trust, this report is not surprisingly very supportive of heat pumps but what it does do better than most previous attempts is to identify what government (both local and national) needs to do and also, how building owners - whether landlords like us, social housing providers or local authorities need to do to get heat pumps in place, how they should go about it and what the benefits of doing so will be. 

The question of how to bring historic buildings up to modern energy efficiency standards is a tough one - especially in conservation areas (of which Portsmouth has 30+) where heat pumps hanging on the side of buildings is probably not a desirable outcome but where something has to be done.Local councils, all of ours included, have been turning a blind eye to this issue - presumably in the hope that someone else will solve this particular problem. When we saw a document called 'Energy Efficiency & Historic Buildings' produced by Historic England we were overjoyed that someone had finally fa...

Fortunately, rogue tenants are uncommon but, like bad landlords, it only takes one to affect everyone's perception. This month we have seen 2 – one was jailed for the damage he caused and the other, just left the landlord with a huge mess to clear up and moved on to blight the life of another landlord and their new neighbours.

The good news is that the government has finally published its 'Heat and Buildings Strategy' and answered the big question about whether we will use heat pumps or hydrogen. The bad news is that it will cost us all a lot of money (but we always knew that it would)  

Apart from not getting clobbered again in the budget (well, not so obviously as usual of late), more good news in that the renters reform bill and the removal of Section 21 has been delayed again. 

Get your tickets for one of the sessions at this 2 day event at Portsmouth Guildhall on Tuesday & Wednesday, 9th and 10th November, 

Our friends at Portsmouth Mediation Service have a new 'restorative' service for landlords and tenants caught up in disputes. Read on for more detail.