Regeneration to enable growth: A toolkit supporting community-led regeneration

Posted on: 13 January 2012
By: mackene
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This document explains how the Government is involving civic leaders, residents, local businesses and civil society organisations in the regeneration of their area. This document was originally published in January 2011 under the title Regeneration to enable growth: What Government is doing in support of community-led regeneration. In the year since then, Government has been progressing its growth and localism agendas, which has added several new tools to the ‘regeneration toolkit’. This updated and refreshed toolkit aims to help local communities, councils, businesses and civil society organisations to navigate their way through the many tools, options, powers, flexibilities and incentives available to them as they shape plans for their area and their community.

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Growing Places Fund: Guidance note on Revolving Infrastructure Funds

Posted on: 12 January 2012
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This note provides practical advice on some of the key issues that are likely to be encountered when considering the development and operation of a Revolving Infrastructure Fund using funding from the Growing Places Fund. The Growing Places Fund (GPF) is intended to be used by Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) to invest in key items of infrastructure to enable development, with the money invested to be returned to the LEP for re-investment in further provision of infrastructure.

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Right to buy 2.0

Posted on: 9 January 2012
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MPs Frank Field and David Davis, have launched a paper which calls for an extension of the right to buy scheme to all housing association properties to make the scheme fairer and to generate much-needed funds to build more social homes.

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GHA Monitoring Programme 2009-11: Technical report. Results from Phase 1: Post-construction testing of a sample of highly sustainable new homes

Posted on: 9 January 2012
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The Good Homes Alliance, a group of developers, academics and other professionals, has measured the fabric performance and heat loss of four energy efficient homes after construction. This study, backed  by the Energy Saving Trust and the Department for Communities and Local Government, found all four buildings had a heat loss of 14 per cent higher than designed, although they all performed better than the building regulations design targets they were required to meet at the time of planning approval. The GHA makes a number of recommendations, including: The house building industry undertakes fabric heat loss testing of a sample of all new homes built; the government should encourage and incentivise the industry to gather evidence about the fabric performance of new homes; and  the government works with the industry to develop a national feedback and learning programme, including training around heat loss.

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Cohesion policy in urban practice: An ambitious urban agenda?

Posted on: 6 January 2012
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The European Union Knowledge Network (EUKN) has developed this key publication in cooperation with the Polish Presidency. Successive presidencies of the EU have recognised the growing importance of urban policy and urban development. This publication shows the great projects cities have been able to develop over the past years in order to realise a smart, sustainable and inclusive Europe. All the case studies included in the publication have benefitted from EU financing, and are being realised in a wide range of national contexts. Besides the case studies, this publication offers the views of several experts on the urban dimension in the future programming period. The views of the local level, the Commission, the Polish presidency and from Eurocities are all included.

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We must fix it: Delivering reform of the building sector to meet the UK’s housing and economic challenges

Posted on: 6 January 2012
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In this report, the author argues that, even with the release of new funding and land, we will not see the increase in housing supply we need unless we look also to reform the development industry itself.

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Impact 2011: Examining a year of catastrophes through the lens of resiliency

Posted on: 6 January 2012
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This report investigates disaster resilience by examining the patterns in the major disasters in 2011. The report, commissioned by the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH), in order to better understand how adaptation of the built environment can increase resilience to shocks such as earthquakes or hurricanes. The study starts with a review of the major environmental hazards of 2011, serving as a stark reminder of the scale of the adaptation challenge.

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Themes and issues in disaster risk reduction: A schema for the categorization of DRR knowledge and action

Posted on: 6 January 2012
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Over the past four years, the information management unit (IMU) of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) secretariat has been collecting and classifying information of all types relating to the domain of disaster risk reduction (DRR). The purpose of this document is to describe the thematic classification system that has been developed, with the aim of promoting a better understanding of DRR, and the development of an internationally recognized information classification and exchange standard. It is hoped that a clear set of well defined themes will help non-specialists such as journalists and newcomers make sense of this complex area of work.

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Effective measures to build resilience in Africa to adapt to climate change

Posted on: 6 January 2012
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A briefing paper from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction presents examples of efforts by African countries to address risk of natural hazards in their national and local planning and budgeting.

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