So there was no LibDem surge in Feniton where Linda Baker, for Labour, proved Owl’s judgement fallible by coming second, pushing Todd Olive into third place! Worth pointing out that the Conservative win in Feniton would have been be very insecure if the opposition had coalesced around a single candidate.

But Owl was right in describing Jake Bonetta, Labour, in Honiton St Michael’s as an “impressive head on young shoulders” with his decisive win.

Owl believes he is the sort of young blood local government needs more of.

Pity that Feniton chose “Male, pale and stale” and that the turnout was so low.

See also https://seatonmatters.org/2021/07/09/congratulations-to-labours-jake-bonetta-for-honiton-win/

Here is Devon Live on the result:

Joe Ives www.devonlive.com

Labour has won a seat on East Devon District Council for the first time in a generation after claiming a by-election victory in Honiton.

Cllr Jake Bonetta, 19, took the Honiton St Michael’s seat in Thursday’s by-election, becoming both the youngest representative on the council and the first from his party in more than 20 years to sit on the council, in what was a gain from the Liberal Democrats.

In Feniton, the Conservatives gained the seat, with Alasdair Bruce claiming victory in what was a gain from the Independents, with Susie Bond, who previously held the seat, having moved to Berkshire to be closer to family.

Speaking after his win, Cllr Bonetta said: “It’s an astounding victory for the community and I want to thank every single person who got involved in my campaign and entrusted me with their votes.

“I really will work for everyone, no matter how you voted. I think it’s so important that I’m there to represent every single person in Honiton St Michael’s.”

Cllr Jake Bonetta, Labour councillor for Honiton St Michael’s

He added: “I think that my young age is an asset. I think it brings new life to the council. I think it brings a new perspective and on top of that I think it’s so important that young people do get involved in politics.”

Cllr Bonetta, who replaces Liberal Democrat Luke Jeffrey who previously held the seat before resigning to focus on his university studies, is currently the youngest secretary for a constituency Labour Party in the country, and becomes the youngest councillor on East Devon.

Cllr Bruce, who was not present at the count, is a beekeeper, and was previously a Thanet councillor from 2007 to 2015.

Alasdair Bruce, Conservative councillor for Feniton

The make-up of the council is now Conservatives (22), East Devon Alliance (13), Independents (15), Liberal Democrats (7), Green Party (2) and Labour (1), with Cllr Bonetta expected to join the governing coalition the Democratic Alliance, currently made up of the East Devon Alliance, Liberal Democrats, Greens and some of the Independents.

Speaking after the election, Cllr Paul Arnott, leader of the council, said: “As leader of East Devon Council it is my absolute determination to work with successful candidates from all party backgrounds and I look forward to working with Alasdair for Feniton and Jake for Honiton. I’m sure they’ll both give eminent service.”

Conservative Jenny Brown, who missed out in Honiton St Michael’s said: “We worked hard. Jake was a worthy opponent and he’s got the town at heart as well – and so have I, and I’m going to be back!”

Labour’s Linda Baden, who lost in Feniton, stayed hopeful: “I think it shows we have a possibility of actually attracting many more votes to the Labour Party, which I think is really positive.”

Lib Dem candidate Todd Olive said: “Obviously my thanks, my gratitude to the 82 voters who put their trust in me to represent them at the district council.”

“Congratulations to Alasdair Bruce, the victor. I hope he serves the residents well, listens to their interests and acts on the urgent issues of our time.”

FENITON

Alasdair Bruce (Conservatives) 239

Linda Baden (Labour) 126

Todd Olive (Liberal Democrats) 82

Turnout 21 per cent

HONITON ST MICHAEL’S

Jake Bonetta (Labour) 807

Jenny Brown (Conservatives) 522

Jules Hoyles (Liberal Democrats) 63

Turnout 25 per cent

Jake Bonetta (Lab) won yesterday’s by-election with 807 votes to 522 for Jenny Brown (Con). Jules Hoyles for the Lib Dems polled 63. Turnout only 25%. He will now be the first Labour councillor in East Devon for 20 years (and the youngest)

In Feniton, Alasdair Bruce (Con) was elected with 239 votes to 126 for Linda Baden (Lab). Todd Olive for the Lib Dems polled 82. Turnout was only 21%.

Strong home buyer demand boosts Persimmon as it snaps up 10,000 plots of land in six months and brings dividend payment forward

Jane Denton www.thisismoney.co.uk 

• Housebuilder Persimmon’s revenue increased to £1.84bn in the first half 
• The FTSE 100-listed group has snapped up 10,000 plots of land in six months 

Published: 10:30, 8 July 2021 | Updated: 10:36, 8 July 2021

Strong demand from buyers and rising property prices helped housebuilder Persimmon bolster its bottom line in the first six months of this year.

Revenues swelled to £1.84billion in the first half, up from £1.75billion over the same timeframe pre-Covid in 2019.

The group snapped up 10,000 new plots of land at 48 sites over the period and had a forward order book at the end of June totalling £1.82billion.

With sales on the up and mass land buying in full swing, Persimmon revealed it will be doling out cash to shareholders sooner than expected.

The group, which has £1.3billion worth of cash stashed away, is bringing its next scheduled 110p a share dividend payment forward to 13 August. For the full year, shareholders will be receiving 235p a share payouts. 

Persimmon is the latest in a string of housebuilders to post strong figures covering the last few months. On Wednesday, Redrow and Vistry both announced robust sales amid high demand from buyers. 

Steve Clayton, fund manager of the Hargreaves Lansdown Select UK Income Shares fund, which has a holding in Persimmon, said: ‘These are good times for housebuilders. 

‘The customers want to buy and financing is easy, with mortgage availability improving, at rock bottom rates. 

‘The challenge is to keep all the ducks in a row, because cost pressures are bubbling away, staff are hard to find and the government can change the degree of market support provided to homebuyers when it chooses.’

Dean Finch, Persimmon’s chief executive, said: ‘Customer demand for our new homes has been strong right across the UK with healthy sales reservation rates through the period.’

The York-based company delivered 7,406 new homes in the first half, up from 4,900 in 2020, but down slightly from 7,584 over the same period in 2020. 

The group, which is Britain’s second biggest homebuilder, said it expected to operate on around 300 sales outlets on average throughout the year.

The FTSE 100 company said the average selling price of new homes forward sold to owner occupiers was £250,350 in the first half, marking an increase of 3.3 per cent on the year before, when the average price tag was £242,400.  

Shares in Persimmon dropped this morning and are currently down 2.87 per cent or 88p to 2,982.00p. A year ago the share price was 2,433.00p, meaning it has risen by over 23 per cent in the last year.

Steve Clayton adds: ‘Persimmon is performing well and throwing off increasing amounts of cash. 

‘Sales rates per site are running 20 per cent ahead of pre-pandemic levels and prices are rising by almost 5 per cent per annum. 

‘That’s enough to offset the cost pressures unfolding across the construction sector. The group has upped its rate of land buying in the face of strong customer demand for new homes.

‘The cash is building up, with the group now sitting on £1.3billion of funds, with only £100million of land purchase obligations to meet.’

He added: ‘That’s an increase of half a billion pounds over the last year and the group are accelerating their cash returns to shareholders, bringing the next scheduled 110p per share payment forward to August. 

‘With Persimmon now paying a total of 235p per share, that puts the stock on a yield of 7.5 per cent, backed by a business that is performing strongly with cash in the bank.’ 

Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor, said: ‘The withdrawal of the stamp duty holiday and other government assistance schemes have yet to fully wash through to the wider economy, and could yet stymie the nascent recovery in terms of unemployment and general consumer confidence. 

‘By the same token, Persimmon is confident of the long term prospects for a housing market which is still undersupplied and where low interest rates and mortgage availability are notable tailwinds.

‘With accompanying comments also upbeat on trading conditions generally, Persimmon is set fair to push further ahead.’

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Persimmon sales rose above pre-pandemic levels in the first half of 2021, as tax cuts and booming British house prices continued to benefit housebuilders.

So, no need to plead poverty and argue that “affordable” housing targets are too challenging! – Owl

Jasper Jolly www.theguardian.com 

The UK’s largest housebuilder said on Thursday that revenues reached £1.84bn in the first six months of 2021, outstripping the £1.75bn recorded in the same period of 2019. Persimmon’s sales had dropped to £1.2bn during the first half of 2020.

The housing industry had feared financial difficulties in 2020 when home sales were temporarily blocked during the UK’s first national lockdowns. However, the government quickly stepped in to prevent house prices falling, announcing an emergency cut in stamp duty.

The tax cuts prompted a boom in house prices, with demand in some areas also boosted by people looking for more space to work from home. Government data suggest that UK average house prices increased by 8.9% over the year to April 2021, although more recent figures from Halifax, a mortgage lender, suggested that prices may have dipped in June as some of the stamp duty cuts expired.

The average price of houses sold by Persimmon was £258,200, 4.9% higher in the first half of 2021 than in 2020. It completed sales of 7,406 houses during the half, up from 4,900 in 2020 and just short of the 7,584 completed in 2019.

“House price growth is mitigating the effect of the upwards pressure being experienced on the industry’s cost base,” Persimmon said in its statement to the stock market. It also said that it was selling houses 20% faster than in 2019.

The stamp duty cut is due to end completely from 1 October, and some analysts expect prices to fall relatively steeply at the end of the year. Yet with houses in short supply, housebuilders have expressed confidence in continued demand. Smaller housebuilders Redrow and Vistry Group both said on Wednesday they were selling homes quicker than in the previous two years.

Persimmon said: “UK housing market fundamentals remain supportive with low interest rates, improving levels of mortgage availability, ongoing government support and strong customer demand.”

The strong market has allowed Persimmon to brush off difficulties, such as the announcement last month by the UK’s competition regulator that it had found “troubling evidence” that leasehold homeowners and prospective buyers were overcharged and misled by the company, among others. In February it also had to set aside £75m to pay to replace potentially flammable cladding.

The sales have allowed Persimmon to dramatically grow its cash pile. It had net cash of £1.3bn on 30 June, up from £800m at the same point in 2020. That allowed it to accelerate its dividend payment. Persimmon will pay out 110p a share in one go in August, rather than splitting it over two payments in August and December.

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Dean Finch, Persimmon’s chief executive, said he was pleased that the company was building homes at the rates achieved before the pandemic, in spite of safety restrictions.

“Persimmon performed well during the first half of the year delivering new home sales completions approaching the levels achieved in the first half of 2019,” he said.

“Customer demand for our new homes has been strong right across the UK with healthy sales reservation rates through the period.”

The Conservative Party has accepted £2.6m in donations from ‘shadowy’ groups with anonymous funders since Boris Johnson became prime minister.

Seth Thévoz www.opendemocracy.net 

An analysis by openDemocracy also reveals that more than £800,000 of this was given directly to individual Tory MPs and their local parties, mostly in marginal ‘Red Wall’ seats.

The finding comes after the Committee on Standards in Public Life warned yesterday that “unincorporated associations” could be used as “a route for foreign money to influence UK elections”.

The committee’s report said that “no transparency” is required when these groups donate to individual MPs, and the people funding them “are not required to be permissible donors”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4, Lord Evans – the committee’s chair – said these groups “can sometimes look slightly shadowy, because you don’t know who has given money to them but they can then contribute funds to campaigns”.

openDemocracy found that British political parties have reported donations worth £12.9m through unincorporated associations in the past five years. £4.1m of this has been declared since Boris Johnson became prime minister in July 2019, with the majority going to his party.

The groups include the Recovery Alliance, which has provided media and consultancy services to anti-lockdown Tory MPs. But the original funders of the group are still unknown.

The Scottish Unionist Association Trust (SUAT) has also faced criticism, after anonymously handing money to Scottish Tory marginal seats in the run-up to the 2016 Holyrood elections. The party repeatedly declined to answer questions from openDemocracy, but has since continued declaring tens of thousands of pounds from the group.

And in 2019, the SUAT took nearly half a million pounds from another unincorporated association, the Irvine Unionist Club, which had previously told openDemocracy that it no longer existed. Since then, the SUAT has been doling out dozens of donations to key Tory seats.

Most unincorporated associations are innocuous groups, such as small local fundraisers or councillors banding together to pay for staff. But these structures have also been used to funnel large sums of ‘dark money’ in British politics.

The Democratic Unionist Party’s record-breaking £435,000 Brexit donation came through an unincorporated association called the Constitutional Research Council. The source of this money has never been revealed.

Opposition parties have called for the committee’s recommendations to be implemented but a new government Elections Bill, introduced on Monday, includes few attempts to bring transparency to political funding.

Cat Smith, Labour’s shadow minister for democracy in the Cabinet Office, told openDemocracy: “Over the last decade the Conservatives have failed to take any action to close the loopholes allowing foreign money to flood into our democracy. This benefits the Conservative Party, allowing wealthy foreign donors who’ve never paid tax in the UK to bankroll their campaigns.

“Instead of closing these loopholes, the government’s Elections Bill announced this week will further weaken our donation laws, allowing rich Conservative expats unlimited access to our democracy and opening the floodgates for foreign money into our politics.”

Elite clubs

Other unincorporated associations include the Carlton Club, an elite £1,700-a-year private members’ club in London’s West End that has supported the Conservative Party for almost 200 years.

Since lockdown last year, the club has made donations of £2,500 each to several Tory MPs in Red Wall constituencies in the north of England and the Midlands. These included donations to MPs and associations in Birmingham Northfield, North East Derbyshire, Stoke-on-Trent, West Bromwich East, and Wolverhampton North East.

As an unincorporated association, there is no way of tracing the original donors of this money.

The United & Cecil Club, a secretive dining society hosted by the Carlton Club, has given £15,000 to the Conservative Party this year – as well as £2,500 to Matthew Robinson’s campaign to be mayor of West Yorkshire.

At the 2019 general election, the United & Cecil Club made similar donations to Tory associations covering dozens of seats, including 11 that were Tory gains at the last election.

Meanwhile, the Midlands-based Leamington Fund has given more than £95,000 to the Conservatives. No public records for the group exist.

“Unincorporated associations make it far too easy to hide the identity of those who make political donations,” said Alex Runswick, senior advocacy manager at Transparency International UK.

“Knowing who is helping fund political campaigns is essential to protect against funds of unknown provenance entering our democracy as well as understanding what these donors may be expecting in return. The law should be changed to provide much greater transparency over contributions from these secretive donor clubs.”

‘Glaring lack of transparency’

Many unincorporated associations are run for legitimate reasons, but they can also provide a loophole in transparency rules.

Normally, individuals who give more than £1,500 to a political campaign need to declare their donation publicly. But donors can avoid this by giving up to £7,500 to an unincorporated association. This group can then pass the money on to a political party without disclosing the original donor’s identity.

Jess Garland, director of policy and research at the Electoral Reform Society, told openDemocracy last month that unincorporated associations are “another giant hole in the sieve that is Britain’s party funding rules”.

“There is a glaring lack of transparency that only fosters distrust and – often justified – fears over who is secretly steering our political debate,” she said.

There is a glaring lack of transparency that fosters distrust over who is steering our political debate

Tory MPs in key marginals like Stoke-on-Trent North, Newcastle-under-Lyme, and Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire are among those to have been major beneficiaries of unincorporated associations’ money.

But the biggest beneficiary of all has been the Surrey Heath Conservative Association, whose MP is Michael Gove.

The Conservative Party’s reliance on unincorporated associations has dwarfed that of other parties. But it is not alone in taking money from them.

Recently, the Labour Party accepted £15,000 from the Labour Finance and Business Group, a unincorporated association which is formally affiliated to the party and was designed to act as “the bridge between the Labour Party and the business community”.

The Momentum campaign group has also made political donations as an unincorporated association, giving a single payment of £4,145 to Labour MP Apsana Begum.

“There is almost total lack of transparency about unincorporated associations’ activities and membership meaning donations through this route are clearly open to abuse by just about anyone with the money and will to do so,” said Susan Hawley, executive director of transparency group Spotlight on Corruption.

“The rules clearly need to be updated to prevent these associations from accepting money from overseas donors and requiring them to publish donations to individual candidates.”

There is no suggestion that any of the unincorporated associations named have acted improperly.