The Independent reports that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn "has signalled that he expects Labour MPs to oppose a third Heathrow runway". According to "a memo to senior members of his Shadow Cabinet seen by the Independent", it adds, Corbyn has "also called to make air pollution a key campaign issue over the next few months, suggesting it should have ‘significant implications for any decision on airport expansion’." The newspaper says Corbyn’s opposition "will be a major stumbling block for airport expansion", given that when the Airports Commission came out in favour of building a new runway in July, "Labour’s then shadow transport secretary Michael Dugher suggested the party would back its recommendations".
The Guardian reports that "roughly 30 pubs shut every week in the UK; a rate of decline that, as one group of worried analysts has calculated, would mean total elimination of the British pub by 2040". In a feature in its "Long Read" series, the newspaper presents a ten-stage guide on "How to disappear a pub", suggesting that one can "hire a planning consultant to fill in forms, sketch out proposals, and write the sort of hustling and entitled cover letters that councils receive every day". It adds: "Cuts have diminished council planning departments to the point that, sometimes, only controversial or fiercely contended applications are truly scrutinised."
The Telegraph reports that,, according to figures from the Department for Communities and Local Government, "councils let a total of 9,128 homes in England to tenants from ‘EU accession countries’ (those which have joined the EU in the last decade)" in 2014/15. The newspaper notes that the "provisional figures" show that the number "has trebled over the last eight years", from 2,800 in 2007/08. It adds: "Housing associations are also letting a bigger chunk of their stock to people from accession countries", which "could reflect the decline in the overall number of lettings by councils in England, which are at their lowest level since records began".
The Guardian reports that an independent technical review is to "examine why the demolition of the Red Road tower blocks in Glasgow failed to go according to plan, leaving two of the six towers looming defiantly out of the rubble". The newspaper says: "Glasgow Housing Association has apologised to about 2,500 residents living inside the exclusion zone set up for the demolition who faced delays in returning to their homes on Sunday evening." The paper also quotes local Labour MSP Patricia Ferguson, "a former resident of the flats", as saying that in the longer term, "any housing in the area should be planned with greater foresight than there had been in the 1960s".
The Times (subscription required) reports that "there has been a huge rise in lettings inquiries from the smart London set of wealthy pet owners, according to EJ Harris, a Mayfair estate agent". The newspaper says that "with almost half of prime London flats banning dogs in the terms of their leases, the labradoodle, shih-tzu and chihuahua-owning classes are having to pay deposits of £10,000 more than non-dog-owners to secure flats that are convenient for ‘walkies’ in Hyde Park, Regent’s Park and Holland Park". The paper adds that "the deposit on a three-bedroom flat for let at £2,500 a week for a dog-owner would be £25,000 or more, compared with £15,000 for a pet-free tenant, the agent said."
