Bristol has been crowned the Green Capital of Europe for 2015 at a ceremony in Nantes. In the previous year Bristol was runner up but this year beat cities such as Brussels in Belgium, Glasgow in Scotland and Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia to win the award.
The title rewards cities which consistently achieve high environmental standards and that are committed to further improvement and sustainability.
Other cities that have previously won have said that it has made a real difference to their percetion and have helped ensure that they are really good places to live in.
According to the Nationwide Building Society, house prices in the UK increased by 0.4%. This brought the annual rate of growth to 1.1% – the highest since Nov 2011.
Nationwide stated that this provided support to “the view that the housing market is gradually gaining momentum”. Robert Gardner, Nationwides’s chief economist indicated that a number of factors were likely to have lead to this including a reduction in the cost of credit and the UK returning to growth in the first period of 2013.
Mr Gardner said that property sales were also up, running at about 5% higher each month this year
It is a fairly obvious statement and most houses that I visit are fitted with them but very often they are not in working order. Quite often the batteries have been removed to prevent false alarms when the toast burns. Alarms should be tested regularly in accordance with the manufacturers instructions and you must ensure that they are installed in the correct position.
Detectors do not last forever and some should be changed at least every 10 years. Ideally install new detectors when moving into a new home – it is only a very small cost on the scale of things. Also consider having linked
Sir Mervyn King, the outgoing governor of the Bank of England warns that a government plan to boost the housing market should not become permanent, saying there “was no place in the long run” for Chancellor George Osborne’s Help to Buy scheme.
The scheme whereby the government will guarantee up to 15% of a mortgage on properties worth up to £600,000 is due to run from Jan 2014 for three years. The idea is that it will provide help for buyers that cannot afford a big deposit in order to get a mortgage.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders says that the buy-to-let sector now accounts for a record portion of mortgage loans in the UK according to data from mortgage lenders.
Property investors have been attracted by low interest rates and high rents thus fuelling the demand for property suitable for letting.
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