Weekly round-up 21 May 2014

Public goes off fracking, housing crisis and new centre of London revealed - our weekly news round-up.

Jackie Whitelaw
21 May 2014

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1. Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney warned that the housing market posed the biggest risk to Britain's economic recovery as a shortage of new homes drives up prices. "The issues around the housing market in the UK...is there are not sufficient houses built in the UK," he said. "(There are) half as many people in Canada as in the UK, (but) twice as many houses are built in Canada every year than in UK."

2. English councils built more than 1000 new homes between January and March, a five fold increase on the previous quarter. The figure of 1009 is the first time councils have built more than 1000 homes since they were allowed to keep rent receipts for development in April 2012.

3. Fracking proponents have growing work to do to convince the public that shale gas is the future for the UK’s energy supply. A new poll suggests that the number of people in favour of shale gas extraction has fallen to 49.8% according to University of Nottingham. This is the lowest number in support of the technology since the university started its poll in 2012.  31.4% were against and 18.45 undecided in a poll of 3657 people.

4. Plans have been put forward for what is claimed to be the world’s first array of floating wind turbines off the Aberdeenshire coast. Kincardine Offshore Windfarm Ltd – a joint project between Pilot Offshore Renewables and Atkins – plans to put up eight turbines 16km off the coast. It says that placing the turbines on semi-submersible platforms would cut construction and installation costs.

5. St Pancras station in London and Grand Central Terminal in New York – two of the world’s most iconic railway stations – have signed a formal partnership designed to help share best practice.

6. New mapping has revealed that London’s centre is 900m to the east of the plaque that marks it in Trafalgar Square. The new geographical centre of London is an iron bench in front of King’s College in London.

7. A report from the Global Sustainability Institute claims that that Britain will have run out of oil, coal and gas in five years. Shortages would increase dependency on Norway, Qatar and Russia, it said, urging a new Europe wide drive toward wind, tidal, solar and other renewable sources of power. According to the report Britain has 5.2 years of oil, 4.5 years of coal and 3 years of its own gas remaining.

8. Roads in Birmingham could be designated as special ‘cycle streets’ with a speed limit of 15mph where it will be illegal to overtake bikes. Birmingham won £17M funding as part of the drive by Government to create a cycle city. It has topped this up to £24.3M to be spent on cycling.

9. National Grid has reported it is preparing to start talks with around a dozen customers to encourage them to sign multi year deals under which they would have their grid supplies cut off at winter peaks in return for discounts on bills. 

10. Somerset County Council has revealed how it will spend some of the £22.3M of funding given by Government to repair flood damaged roads. The authority is to spend £4M on raising the A372 over the river Sowy, £1M for a deep clean of the drainage system and verges, £750,000 to raise the road into the village of Muchelney and £270,000 to study raising other roads in the area.