The homelessness charity Shelter is launching a national investigation into housing after an opinion survey showed that seven out of ten people believe that Britain is in the middle of a housing crisis. The poll, conducted for Shelter by MORI, shows that house prices are seen as the biggest housing problem.In the Shelter survey 74 per cent of respondents cited prices as the main housing issue. Other areas of concern were run down estates, mentioned by six out of ten people, children living in bad housing, 36 per cent, and high rents which were highlighted by 34 per cent of people.

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Britian’s biggest teachers’ union, the NUT, is today launching a campaign for sprinkler systems to be fitted in all schools to help cut the one hundred million pounds a year bill for damage caused by fires in schools. The campaign has won the backing of a number of other organisations including the Fire Brigades Union, senior fire officers and the Local Government Association.The NUT says the number of school fires rose by 55 per cent in 2003 and the related costs has gone up by more than 170 per cent over ten years. Up to 20 schools a week are damaged or destroyed by arson with nine out of ten of the fires being started by pupils. Day time arson attacks when pupils are on the premises now make up a third of school fires and insurance premiums for schools doubled between 2001 and 2003, according to the NUT. Zurich Municipal, the main school fire insurer, says it runs a 100 per cent loss on its school insurance business.

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By Dr Jake Reynolds.In this report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development the author argues that a top-down fact-dominated, mechanistic approach to learning will no longer produce what is needed in today’s organisation. Change happens so quickly and with such regularity that classroom based, fact dominated learning soon becomes out of date. Successful organisations are those that can persuade and encourage their people to learn – to seek actively to acquire the skills necessary to enable constant learning, and the accompanying desire to make use of these skills. This will only happen in the right circumstances: the organisation must seek to create what is described in the report as a “growth medium”.

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