Over 350,000 people across the UK have now used the government’s Help to Buy schemes to help them buy their own homes, new statistics reveal.

A new national housing agency has been launched by the Housing Secretary as a key step towards delivering the homes the country needs.
Sajid Javid has launched Homes England, a successor to the Homes and Communities Agency.
By bringing together their existing planning expertise and new land buying powers, the new agency will play a significant role in securing land in areas where people want to live, support smaller and more innovative house builders into the market and resource brownfield sites to deliver homes for families.

A report, which took the government 10 months to publish, has revealed that no new devolution deals were announced in 2016-17.
The Local Government Association (LGA) were said to be ‘disappointed’ the report had taken so long to be published. It has previously warned of the dangers of ‘devolution deadlock’.
The LGA is calling for further detail on the government’s manifesto commitment to creating a ‘common devolution framework’ as soon as possible.

More than 2,000 drivers in 2017 were targeted by officials in Liverpool in a drive to enforce taxi licensing laws.
Operations by council offers and Merseyside Police took action against a total of 2,091 drivers.
Around three quarters of the cases involved privately owned car drivers parking illegally in hackney taxi ranks while seven private hire drivers were also warned.
A total of 485 hackney and private hire drivers were issued with written warnings for a variety of offences, and 53 were prosecuted.

Nottinghamshire residents are being encouraged to recycle drink cans and plastic bottles to help raise money for terminally ill local people.

Devon County Council’s cabinet has approved flood improvement schemes for two local communities, Ivybridge and Uplyme.
The schemes are expected to need over £500,000 of investment.
They will provide improved protection up to a one in 100 year flood event.
Business cases are being prepared for the schemes and they will be submitted to the Environment Agency to bid for £180,000 from Defra Flood Defence Grant in Aid and £60,000 from Local Levy.

Lancashire County Council’s cabinet is set to consider further savings of more than £11 million when it meets soon.
The savings have been proposed following a review of service budgets. If agreed, the total value of savings during this financial year is over £81 million.
However the council’s financial position remains extremely challenging, with a forecasted funding gap of £144.492 million in 2021/22.
The funding gap for this financial year is forecasted as £48.886 million.

12 million people will be unemployed or in jobs they are over-qualified for by 2024, prompting calls for an overhaul of skills services.

Derby and Nottingham city councils are set to launch a new combined ‘Metro’ commercial waste service in the region to provide a more efficient service.