Single European Sky

Posted on: 16 October 2012
By: mackene
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The Single European Sky, the flagship project to create a single European airspace, tripling capacity and halving air traffic costs, is “not delivering”, according to Vice-President Siim Kallas, European Commissioner for transport,. He has recently announced his intention to present new legislative proposals in Spring 2013 to accelerate implementation, as well as taking all enforcement actions possible, including infringements where necessary. Inefficiencies caused by Europe’s fragmented airspace bring extra costs of close to €5 billion each year. It adds 42 kilometres to the distance of an average flight, forcing aircraft to burn more fuel, generate more emissions, pay more in costly user-charges and suffer greater delays. The United States controls the same amount of airspace, with more traffic, at almost half the cost.

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The limits of influence. The role of supply chains in influencing health and safety management in two sectors

Posted on: 16 October 2012
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This report presents findings on factors that positively influence the way health and safety is managed by suppliers in the construction and merchant shipping sectors. The research used two construction case studies to explore what positive effects their supply chains had on health and safety management. The study found that they were influenced by the demands of their clients to ensure good health and safety practice among their own contractors and subcontractors. However, in other chains where high standards from the top aren’t dictated throughout. The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health is urging construction businesses not to cut corners on health and safety at the expense of worker safety.

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Making social protection ‘climate-smart’

Posted on: 15 October 2012
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Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) aims to reduce the vulnerability of poor people to a range of shocks and ongoing stresses through the integration of social protection (SP), climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). However there are still few documented examples of social protection programming that specifically accounts for climate change, now and in the future, or that seeks to mitigate the potential of disasters in risk-prone communities. This briefing, from the Institute of Development Studies, draws policy-relevant lessons for ASP programming from a social protection programme in Tanzania taking its first steps to become ‘climate-smart’.

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Resilience: New utopia or new tyranny? Reflection about the potentials and limits of the concept of resilience in relation to vulnerability reduction programmes

Posted on: 15 October 2012
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Resilience is becoming influential in development and vulnerability reduction sectors such as social protection, disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Policy makers, donors and international development agencies are now increasingly referring to the term. In that context, the objective of this paper was to assess in a critical manner the advantages and limits of resilience. While the review highlights some positive elements, in particular the ability of the term to foster integrated approach across sectors, it also shows that resilience has important limitations. In particular it is not a pro-poor concept, and the objective of poverty reduction cannot simply be substituted by resilience building.

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Battersea Power Station Master Plan

Posted on: 15 October 2012
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Detailed plans for the first phase of Rafael Viñoly’s Battersea Power Station masterplan have now been submitted to Wandsworth Council.

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Winning in growth cities 2012/13

Posted on: 15 October 2012
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This report, published by Cushman & Wakefield,  examines investment opportunities for commercial property in growth cities across the globe. It provides an in-depth look at which cities are winning among global property investors and what factors are driving their interest, including Cushman & Wakefield’s take on which cities will be winning in the year ahead.  Registration is required to download report.

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New West End Company Business Plan 2012

Posted on: 12 October 2012
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The New West End Company was established over a decade ago as Europe’s largest retail led Business Improvement District (BID), to champion the interests of over 600 retailers, property owners and other businesses in Bond Street, Oxford Street, Regent Street and their connecting streets. The aim was to bring about change in an area that represents the largest concentration of retail and property estates in the world. The Company has launched a new five year business plan which will commence on 1 April 2013.

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Heritage at Risk Register 2012

Posted on: 12 October 2012
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English Heritage published the 2012 Heritage at Risk Register. A total of 5,831 listed buildings, monuments, archaeological sites, landscapes, battlefields, protected wrecks, places of worship and conservation areas are now on the Register. Excluding listed places of worship (for which the survey is incomplete), 1,150 assets have been removed from the list for positive reasons since the Register was launched in 2008. The sites that remain at risk tend to be the more challenging ones where solutions are taking longer to implement.

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Financial viability of the social housing sector: introducing the Affordable Homes Programme

Posted on: 12 October 2012
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The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has published the results of an inquiry which examined the financial viability of the social housing sector and the Affordable Homes Programme. In December 2010, the government announced the Affordable Homes Programme, under which there is £1.8 billion capital funding in government grants to social housing providers. The Department for Communities and Local Government has overall responsibility for the Programme, which is delivered by the Homes and Communities Agency through contracts with housing providers. The Department expects the Programme to support the provision of approximately 80,000 homes in the four years from April 2011 to March 2015. The Agency secured commitments from providers to build 24,000 more homes than its initial target of 56,000. Through negotiation the Agency reduced the average grant per home to £20,000; a third of that under the previous programme. It is not yet clear whether the Programme will deliver better value for money in the long term. The reduction in the grant paid to providers for each home will be funded in part by housing providers being able to charge higher rents to tenants, leading to an estimated £1.4 billion increase in housing benefit payments over 30 years. The Programme therefore shifts cost from one department to another. The Committee argues that the Department needs to do more work to understand the impact of the Programme on tenants and its interaction with wider welfare reforms.

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Understanding energy challenges in India: Policies, players and issues

Posted on: 12 October 2012
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This report from the International Energy Agency explores in detail the policies, players and issues of India’s power, coal, oil and gas, renewables and nuclear sectors. It also highlights the key challenges India faces, challenges that must be resolved for the evolution of the fast-growing country’s energy sector towards a sustainable energy future and eventually critical for the prospects of the Indian and global economies.

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