Social animal

Waiting on the Hill
The Housing Corporation's top brass were all set to meet housing minister Keith Hill for the rubber stamp on their plans to build 67,000 homes over the next two years. Hill, though, obviously had more important matters to attend to and corporation chair Peter Dixon and assistant chief executive for investment Neil Hadden were stood up by the minister at the last minute. Another meeting is pencilled in for later this month, but I won't be holding my breath.

Can I get back to you on that one?
Perhaps one reason for Hill's cancellation may be that the ODPM has been busy wracking its collective brains coming up with answers to parliamentary posers such as the offering last week from Llew Smith, MP for Blaenau Gwent.

In the light of the government's enthusiasm for registered social landlords using off-site manufacturing, Smith wanted to know whether the ODPM had considered the issue of "summertime overheating of lightweight buildings". Minister Phil Hope gallantly replied that he was aware of the experience in "hotter countries" but that it was "not considered relevant" in the UK.

Mistakes, I've made a few …
It is normal when speaking at an event in honour of someone else to massage their ego a little. However, Peter Dixon went much further than most at the House of Commons terrace reception last Thursday in honour of Aman Dalvi, new chair of Gallions Housing Association. He claimed that Dalvi had been the cause of "the biggest mistake of my life". Apparently – at an undisclosed point in the past – he had failed to offer Dalvi a job. Sources assure me, though, that he was not referring to the post recently filled by Jon Rouse.

They drink it in the Congo
The case of "Missbongo" – the anonymous internet-savvy Hackney resident who tried to illegally auction her tenancy on website Ebay – is well on the way to being solved. After a tenancy audit of 100 of its homes, Southern Housing Group is confident that Missbongo lives in one of its properties.

It says the net has tightened around the cheeky tenant and that it's only a matter of time before she is snared. But Missbongo (not her real name) had initially hoped to sell her tenancy and the right to buy to fund a move abroad "by 29 January". Given that this date passed some six weeks ago, could it be that Missbongo has already made good her escape?

A nice place by the sea
Where better for Hull's urban regeneration company, Citybuild, to unveil its ambitious masterplan for the city than MIPIM, the property conference in Cannes? But pity poor John Prescott, deputy prime minister and Hull's MP: he's going all the way out there to support them – and the French Riviera is so unpleasant at this time of year.