Day: July 4, 2018

The government’s national housing agency today publishes its latest Land Development and Disposal Plan, which details the nationwide portfolio of sites it plans to market for residential development.

For the first time an interactive map is available alongside the Development and Disposal plan allowing users to identify sites geographically and to view site-level details, including red-line plans, online.

To support its ambitious disposal plans, Homes England will provide improved technical packs and site information as well as a standard Building Lease to ensure a consistent approach across the country. These will incorporate clear approaches to the pace of build-out, Modern Methods of Construction, design and quality of place and tenure mix.

Stephen Kinsella, Executive Director for Land at Homes England, said:

“As part of Homes England’s expanded remit, we will be much more active in the land market, using our increased resources to ramp up the acquisition of land opportunities and developing new ways to partner other government departments to bring forward more sites more quickly. We are ambitious about our disposals for the year ahead so we’re really keen to talk to developers about the opportunities in our latest plan.”

The publication of the Land Development and Disposal Plan follows the news that Homes England is launching a new framework that will help speed up the delivery of new homes, which will be in place in the autumn. The procurement of a new Multidisciplinary and Technical Services Frameworks will broaden the technical and design services available to support Homes England and other public bodies to accelerate the supply of new homes, with the frameworks providing direct access to the professional, technical and design services needed to prepare land for housing development.

Sites listed in the Land Development and Disposal Plan will be disposed of on a competitive basis through Homes England’s Delivery Partner Panel (DPP3), through a private treaty sale, bespoke OJEU process or auction.

Ends

For further media information, contact Patsy Cusworth – patsy.cusworth@homesengland.gov.uk Tel: 079677 2328

Notes to Editors

Homes England is the new housing delivery organisation that has been created to adopt a more commercial approach to respond to the long term housing challenges facing this country. The new, expanded agency will play a far bigger role in investing in supply and intervening in the market to help deliver 300,000 homes a year by the middle of the next decade.

Homes England will act differently from its predecessor, bringing together money, land, expertise and planning and compulsory purchase powers to accelerate the supply of new homes and address affordability issues in areas of highest demand.

For more information visit: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/homes-england.

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) has identified a new bed bug aggregation pheromone, which acts as a powerful lure. A spin-out company from the LSHTM, Vecotech Ltd, has received a grant of £220,034 to help the commercialisation of a product to detect infestations at an early stage, which would lead to more effective control.

Professor James Logan, of Vecotech and Head of Department of Disease Control at LSHTM, said:

Bed bug control remains one of the most lucrative and growing markets in the pest management industry globally and insect numbers are also reported to be increasing rapidly.

The common bed bug bite can cause reactions ranging from minor irritation to severe allergic hypersensitivity. They are a pest of significant public health importance and a major global economic problem, widely infesting homes, hospitals and dormitories and damaging the hospitality industry through infestation of hotels, cinemas and transport.

There are a few bed bug detection methods and monitoring devices available, but there are no established products with proven reliability and efficacy for detecting low level infestations quickly.

The objective of this project is to develop an effective test prototype of this powerful lure, to be used in a bed bug-specific trap, capable of detecting early stage infestations, that is effective, sensitive, long lasting, safe, affordable and discrete.

Other projects to receive grant funding include West Midlands’ Key Forensic Services Ltd (£599,260), who are developing a desktop DNA sampling system to dramatically speed up crime scene investigation.

Also, Northern Ireland-based Almac Diagnostics Ltd (£500,001) are working on a lab and software solution to improve the success of clinical cancer trials for a range of patients, while Cambridge business Entomics Biosystems Ltd (£571,166) is leading a partnership developing an innovative system to enable insects to become a nutritious and sustainable feed ingredient for the UK poultry market.

In this round, a total of £17.44 million has been allocated by Innovate UK for projects which cover new products, processes or services that have the potential to generate significant positive impact and growth for the UK economy.

Fionnuala Costello, Head of Open Programmes at Innovate UK, said:

All of these projects are tackling issues that affect many people and cover key sectors linked to government’s Industrial Strategy. They have the potential to have a lasting impact.

The overall quality of applications from across the country was of exceptionally high standard and covers a wide range of industries, from digital and creative to biosciences and medicine development, which shows the appetite of UK businesses to innovate and grow.

Through our ongoing funding programme we are supporting hundreds of high-growth businesses, collaborations and industries to innovate and compete in future global markets.

Competition background

Innovate UK’s open competition programme is available to any technology, science, engineering or industrial area and offers individual funding ranging from £25,000 to £2 million for up to 36 months to support innovation at various stages. It is designed to help develop cutting-edge projects at any stage from conceptualisation, through to prototype development and demonstration, with a view to eventual commercialisation.

• infringement levels down 7% points from 2015 for 16 to 24 year olds
• decrease of 5% points in the use of illegal services since 2013

While overall levels of piracy remain the same compared to 2017, there has been a drop in illegal activity by some groups. This is especially true amongst young consumers, with over half of 16 to 24 year olds now paying to access at least one subscription service.

The latest figures, from the Online Copyright Infringement (OCI) tracker, are published on British IP Day. The annual tracker measures the level of online copyright infringement in the UK. The UK has led the way in measuring online copyright infringement in this way with Australia, and more recently Canada, using the same method.

Sam Gyimah, Minister for IP, launched the report at the Alliance for IP British IP Day event. He said:

The variety of legitimate services now available to consumers is extraordinary and our world-leading creative industries have made great strides in meeting the demands of viewers and fans, so there really is no excuse for the ongoing use of illegal services.

Today’s findings are a positive step forward in stamping out online copyright infringement, but we cannot afford to be complacent. We are committed to tackling piracy and helping this vibrant sector go from strength to strength through our Creative Industries Sector Deal, a major part of our modern Industrial Strategy.

Key findings from the OCI tracker include:

• the UK has a lower overall infringement rate (25% of online content consumers) than both Canada (26%) and Australia (38%)
• levels of infringement varied by content type. TV programmes recorded the highest levels of infringement (23% amongst consumers of TV), with music (18%) and films (19%). Whereas infringement of software has decreased from 26% in 2017 to 20% this year. Infringement of sports content was 21%
• an increase in the share of consumers citing convenience, quality and fears of viruses/malware/spyware as reasons for choosing paid for services over free services
• 65% of those who consumed any of the six key content types during the past three months paid for at least some of it (an increase from 60% in 2017), this is partly due to increased spend on subscription services
• amongst infringers there was a decline in the use of BitTorrent software (from 11% of infringers in 2017 to 7% this year), while the use of Kodi remained relatively unchanged (used by 12% of infringers)

Eddy Leviten, Director General of the Alliance for Intellectual Property, added:

British IP Day is a celebration of the creativity that brings great products, brands, design and content to consumers worldwide. Today we are taking that message to Parliament and ensuring that MPs across the political spectrum understand the need to protect IP and support creators of all kinds.

The OCI Tracker is a valuable measure of progress in the UK in the use of legitimate content services but piracy levels remain at one quarter of the population, which is still far too high.

The Alliance and its members are active participants in the Sector Deal roundtables which can help to drive down piracy and counterfeiting and allow genuine content and goods to flourish. We look forward to working collaboratively to achieve concrete results.”

Temporary Detective Chief Inspector Nick Court of the City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Department (PIPCU) said:

It is encouraging to hear that consumers are favouring subscription streaming services and that illegal streaming is becoming less attractive, especially to the young.

Digital piracy is a problem that has a number of risks associated with it, including enabling children to watch inappropriate content, and we continue to encourage people to use legitimate services in order to avoid falling victim to such risks.

We are hopeful that the younger consumers who are using these legitimate services will lead the way in encouraging all users to do the same.

The government is taking action to tackle online copyright infringement through a range of activities:

• joint funding with DCMS for the Creative Content UK campaign, Get it Right from a Genuine Site
• IPO funding of over £7.5 million for the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit
• continuing to work with search engines and copyright owners to ensure that copyright infringing websites are removed from the front page of search results.
• worked with Industry to fund a campaign fronted by Crime Stoppers to raise awareness of the risks involved in using illicit streaming devices
• made commitments through the Industrial Strategy Creative Industry Sector Deal
• launched a new series of Nancy & the Meerkats to encourage children to think about ownership of IP, whether music, video or information on the web
• in a unique partnership with UK Music, launched Music Inc in 2013, an app to give gamers an insight into the modern music industry as well as education them on aspects of copyright
• in 2015 launched crackingideas.com a portal for free IP and copyright education resources from the IPO and industry including the Industry Trust, UK Music and ALCS

Note to editors

1. The UK survey was funded by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and was undertaken by Kantar Media.
   The survey was conducted between March and May 2018.
2. It’s the eighth wave of a large-scale consumer tracking study into the extent of online copyright infringement, as well as wide digital behaviours and attitudes, among people ages 12+ in the UK.