Vicky Spratt
Columnist & Housing Correspondent at The i Paper
Housing correspondent @theipaper Orwell Prize finalist 2023 & 2024 Author of TENANTS & We Were Promised The Moon (2025) Please do get in touch with stories.
Articles
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1 day ago |
inews.co.uk | Vicky Spratt
This is Home Front with Vicky Spratt, a subscriber-only newsletter from The i Paper. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here. Good afternoon and welcome to this week’s Home Front. Ask yourself this: Are you a Mimby? That’s a “Maybe In My Backyard” – someone who is open to new development, such as the building of new homes or infrastructure in their area as long as certain conditions are met.
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3 days ago |
inews.co.uk | Vicky Spratt
“I know the exact date I will lose my home – the 20th of March 2030,” Spencer Shackleton says. “It’s like being told the day I’ll die; nothing can change it.”In less than five years, the 56-year-old Navy veteran will be forced to sell or have his family’s three-bedroom home in Preston, Lancashire, repossessed. In 2005, Spencer and his wife took out one of Northern Rock’s controversial “Together” mortgages, which allowed homebuyers to borrow more than the value of the property.
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3 days ago |
inews.co.uk | Vicky Spratt
Tens of thousands of mortgage prisoners forced to pay “excessively high” interest rates for years in the wake of the financial crash were failed by the Tory government, a former minister has told The i Paper. Around 160,000 homeowners are stuck repaying thousands of pounds extra each year after being left stranded with ‘closed-book’ lenders who took on their mortgages when firms such as Northern Rock and Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2007 and 2008.
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5 days ago |
inews.co.uk | Vicky Spratt
Sir Sadiq Khan is set to redraw London’s green belt to encourage mass housebuilding on the outskirts of the capital in a “radical change” to build 88,000 homes a year. The mayor of London will announce in a speech in Greenwich on Friday that the capital will need almost one million extra homes over the next decade to meet demand and that the “status quo is simply unsustainable”.
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6 days ago |
inews.co.uk | Vicky Spratt
It was colder than I expected on the morning of the London marathon this April. As I walked through the empty streets of the city towards the river to watch the women’s elites near the finishing line at around 10am, I noticed something. There were tents. Everywhere. Clusters of two or three. Dotted around in tiny encampments as I made my way through Kings Cross, Bloomsbury and Holborn. These tents, some of which seemed to contain people who were still sleeping, were striking.
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RT @ashridgepf: I heard this whole programme on the radio yesterday. It's heartbreaking. Happy to try and help anyone in this position.
Keir Starmer wants migration caps and "cuts to lower-skilled work visas". This includes social care work. Perhaps also construction? So, what's the plan for getting UK workers into these sectors? Sectors where there are worker shortages! And how do they plan to do that quickly?
RT @theipaper: ‘I’m trapped on a 8.6% mortgage rate – I know the exact day I’ll lose my home’ 🔴 Like thousands who took out "sub-prime" m…
