Digest this month

The future of east London’s City Airport has been thrown into doubt after it was revealed that housing plans are being drawn up for its current site for a “post-airport scenario”.

London Development Agency (LDA) chief executive Manny Lewis revealed earlier this month that a masterplan was being drawn up for a new community at the City Airport site and the surrounding, LDA-owned, land that was set to be used for the airport’s expansion.

Lewis said: “With the Crossrail decision, it does raise legitimate questions about its [City Airport’s] long-term viability. We also have the issue about our own housing agenda, where we don’t want development in the Royal Docks stymied by the rapid growth of the airport with the noise and it environmental impacts… They can’t expand without the LDA land.”

Bovis Homes has bought north of England housebuilder Elite Homes in a deal worth almost £72m. In the latest consolidation in the housebuilding sector, Kent-based Bovis will pay £25.7m for Merseyside firm Elite, which sells homes across the North-west and Yorkshire. The deal will see Bovis take on £46.2m of the company's debt but will also increase its consented land holdings by more than 800 plots.

The news comes as the RICS latest survey reveals that house prices across the UK fell last month at the fastest rate for two years. It also showed that demand from first-time buyers had decreased by the fastest rate in over four years.

A quarter of young working households have been priced out of the housing market, research has revealed. The situation is worst in the South-west region, where 34% are unable to purchase property at the lowest level in their local housing market, followed closely by London (31.5%) and the South -east (30.2%).

The report by the University of York for Hometrack also revealed that the cost of private rents was significantly lower than the cost of house purchase providing an important supply of affordable housing.

Hometrack director Richard Donnell said: “The private rented sector is taking much of the strain … This growth needs to be sustained to ensure adequate housing choice for those priced out of the market.”

Property and regeneration group Places for People is in secret talks to become a utilities company. A source close to the discussions said plans would depend on the group winning English Partnerships’ first Carbon Challenge site at Hanham Hall in Bristol and its bid to build an eco-town. The source said: “This is a financial solution to fund additional capital costs in going green. We all need to find a solution to generate revenue to cover the upfront costs of putting green infrastructure, such as CHP etc, on to new projects.”

The battle to regenerate the Lower Lea Valley in east London, the site of the 2012 Olympics, has begun. Those on the shortlist to create a legacy masterplan for after the Games include an EDAW-led consortium, an Arup-led consortium, architect Rem Koolhaas’ Dutch firm Office for Metropolitan Architecture and architect Witherford Watson Mann.

Sir Bob Kerslake is emerging as front-runner for the new post heading up the new Homes and Communities Agency, which is to be formed from the merged English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation. Kerslake is chief executive of Sheffield Council and is already a non-executive board member of Communities and Local Government.

The social housing regulator will be taken over by an independent body, the government has announced. Housing minister Yvette Cooper said lobbying had swung the argument in favour of a stand alone body instead of the Audit Commission.

Cooper added that local authorities would also come under the scope of the new watchdog, to be called the Office for Tenants and Social Landlords, within two years of it coming into operation.