Help-to-buy loans benefited more rich than poor households

Whitehall figures show over 5,500 households with annual income of £80,000 got loans

More rich households than poor ones are benefiting from a £25bn public subsidy that the former prime minister Theresa May claimed was “restoring the dream of home ownership for a new generation”.

More than 5,500 households with an annual income of over £80,000 have been given help-to-buy loans in the past year compared with 4,142 households earning less than £30,000, the government’s own figures have revealed. Well over 2,000 of the richest households who were awarded taxpayer-funded loans, allowing them to buy new-build houses with only a small deposit, had incomes in excess of £100,000.

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Brexit jitters grind UK housing market to a halt in August

Average house price dips to £216,096, says Nationwide, as buyer activity stalls

Brexit uncertainty is still weighing heavily on the UK housing market, which ground to a halt in August,and could take a heavier toll in the coming months, analysts warned.

Nationwide building society reported that house prices were flat in August as political and economic turbulence continued to take their toll.

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Let’s move to: Ventnor, Isle of Wight – defiantly Victorian, with a hipster sheen

The town is strung out on hairpin bends winding down to the sea

What’s going for it? Long before the climate emergency, those in the 19th century without a posting in Delhi or Singapore would come to Ventnor to experience the tropics. The town is a world apart, sunbathing alone beneath its own vast windbreak, St Boniface Down, with just the ocean for company. Its famed microclimate was catnip for Victorians. Consumptive patients desperately sucked in its warm, moist air at the Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest; botanists and ecologists chased its rare butterflies, lizards and odd flora, a lost world or Galápagos just south of Newport; thrill-seekers explored Blackgang Chine, Britain’s oldest theme park; and the rest of them hit the bandstand for tea, cake and a shimmy. It remains a defiantly Victorian place, but having had its dose of inevitable seaside decline, in recent years it has acquired a light hipster sheen. There’s a lot of upcycling, vintage and keeping-calm-and-carrying-on going on, a fair amount of William-Morris-meets-mid-century-modern and a cultural scene in rude health. Though I do worry for that microclimate. Might get a tad Saharan, now the rest of the UK is turning tropical.

The case against Barely a flat surface, it’s awfully steep pretty much everywhere. Despite recent improvements, it still suffers from a seasonal economy.

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Let’s move to: Ventnor, Isle of Wight – defiantly Victorian, with a hipster sheen

The town is strung out on hairpin bends winding down to the sea

What’s going for it? Long before the climate emergency, those in the 19th century without a posting in Delhi or Singapore would come to Ventnor to experience the tropics. The town is a world apart, sunbathing alone beneath its own vast windbreak, St Boniface Down, with just the ocean for company. Its famed microclimate was catnip for Victorians. Consumptive patients desperately sucked in its warm, moist air at the Royal National Hospital for Diseases of the Chest; botanists and ecologists chased its rare butterflies, lizards and odd flora, a lost world or Galápagos just south of Newport; thrill-seekers explored Blackgang Chine, Britain’s oldest theme park; and the rest of them hit the bandstand for tea, cake and a shimmy. It remains a defiantly Victorian place, but having had its dose of inevitable seaside decline, in recent years it has acquired a light hipster sheen. There’s a lot of upcycling, vintage and keeping-calm-and-carrying-on going on, a fair amount of William-Morris-meets-mid-century-modern and a cultural scene in rude health. Though I do worry for that microclimate. Might get a tad Saharan, now the rest of the UK is turning tropical.

The case against Barely a flat surface, it’s awfully steep pretty much everywhere. Despite recent improvements, it still suffers from a seasonal economy.

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The 10 best bright and beautiful home accessories – in pictures

From a botanical rug to a bohemian jug: what better way to brighten up the last days of summer?

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The 10 best bright and beautiful home accessories – in pictures

From a botanical rug to a bohemian jug: what better way to brighten up the last days of summer?

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Houses for horse-lovers – in pictures

Homes with room for equestrian interests from North Yorkshire to Gloucestershire

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