Waiting for a backlog of gossip to arrive in the post
Tough crowd
Radio 1 presenter and ladette Sara Cox confessed to a little stage fright when she addressed the audience at last week's launch of Centrepoint's rebranding. La Cox – soon to be shunted off the languishing breakfast slot and into daytime presenting – is a patron of said homelessness charity.

"I'm a bit nervous talking to all these people," she said. "It's more than listen to the breakfast show at the moment."

Bin there, bought the holiday home
Angry Devon residents have fallen foul of the local police over the bizarre way they are protesting against second homes in the village of Appledore. The campaigners plan to place black bin liners in the letterboxes of the holiday homes to make them stand out, but the boys in blue fear the tactic may help burglars to identify empty properties. Not to mention the confusion caused to postal workers …

Performance incentive
So MPs who chair select committees are to get an extra £12,500 a year? Good for them. It's a shame, though, that they aren't paid per report. If they were, Andrew Bennett, chair of the ODPM committee, would be rich enough to retire by now.

Their kind of town
Westminster council and homelessness charity Thames Reach Bondway have gone to New York to see how zero tolerance works on the other side of the pond. Their busy schedule includes visiting New York's homelessness tsar and seeing the community courts system that is soon to be introduced here. One would hope that, with Christmas round the corner, they might fit in a little shopping in between dedication to duty.

Get ahead, get a head massage
Good news stories about multiple antisocial behaviour orders seem so passé when set against tales of councils and RSLs hiring Buddhist monks to lead meditation classes during employees' coffee breaks. Family Housing Association joined the fray this week with Indian head massage, aromatherapy, colour and image consultation on offer for its staff. Can anyone out there top that?

Spot the difference
It's not all pipes and slippers at the Law Commission, you know. The commission's London headquarters might seem like a throwback to quieter, gentler times, but they've apparently been flat out for the past 18 months working up the final draft of report on housing tenure, which finally came out this week. "We don't want anyone to think that we've taken 18 months to come up with the same proposals as the original consultation paper," says Martin Partington, commissioner for housing law. It's been "difficult – and a lot of hard work," apparently.

Slide rule

Decaying furniture in the garden might be considered untidy but Swansea council has its eyes set on a new evil: toys. A council tenant in the city has been ordered to put her children’s toy paddling pool, slide and seesaw away because they offend the council. She, though, says she has no space for the toys in the house. The battle of the toys has begun.

Source

Housing Today