The typical rent in England and Wales rose to £712 a month, according to LSL Property Services, which owns chains Your Move and Reeds Rains.

LSL said the increase, though small at 0.1%, was the first rent rise in the month of January since its records began in 2008. It was the first month-on-month increase since October.

LSL said average London rents were now £1,032 per month. Rents rose the fastest on a monthly basis in the West Midlands and South West, where they increased by 1.8% and 1.5% respectively.

Rental arrears also remained high in January, according to LSL, with 10.7% of all rent late or unpaid at the end of the month.

The government is urging people on low incomes to find out home energy grants to help them cope with freezing temperatures and rising fuel bills.

Letters have been sent to 675,000 homes across England to raise public awareness of the government grants that are available to help with fuel costs.  The mailshot was concentrated on areas where there are high levels of fuel poverty, including Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and County Durham.

Pensioners and people on very low incomes can get money off having their heating system repaired or replaced, or their lofts insulated.

The government runs three schemes to help with energy costs:
Warm Front:  This scheme provides grants to pay for boiler repairs, new central heating systems and insulation work. Those eligible can apply for up to £3,500 towards the cost of the work or up to £6,000 for homes not connected to mains gas. The scheme is targeted at people on certain income-related benefits and living in properties that are poorly insulated and/or do not have a working central heating system. Applicants must own their home or rent it from a private landlord.

The Warm Home Discount: This scheme is intended to help some two million low income and vulnerable households with their energy bills this year. It automatically gives a £120 fuel bill discount to about 600,000 of the most vulnerable pensioners.

Cold Weather Payments: These payments  are  paid to pensioners who receive pension credit or people on income-related benefits who meet certain criteria, during periods of severely cold weather. Since the start of this winter’s Cold Weather Payment season, DWP has paid an estimated £27.8m to more than 1.1m customers across Great Britain through Cold Weather Payments.

The current freeze has seen daytime temperatures fall four or five degrees lower than average for February – which is traditionally the coldest month of the year.

The Government has failed to overturn a High Court decision that its plan to cut subsidies for solar panels was unlawful.

The Court of Appeal today ruled that the Government’s proposal to reduce subsidies for solar photovoltaic schemes completed after 12 December 2011 – 11 days before the end of a consultation on the proposed new rates – was outside the scope of its powers.

The Government has said that cuts to the subisdy, known as the Feed-in Tariff, are necessary because solar installations are getting much cheaper and the subsidy scheme has been much more popular than it expected.

The Government last week announced contingency plans in case it lost the court action.  Under these plans, the current tariff of just over 43p/kWh  will remain in place for projects licensed by 3 March 2012. Projects certified after this date will qualify for the higher rate until April 1st, when the new reduced tariff of 21p/kWh will come into force.

When the government first announced the subsidy cuts last year, there was a surge in installations as people tried to qualify for the higher rate subsidies. Today’s decision raises the prospect of a fresh rush for installations to be completed in the next six weeks.

Minster for Energy and Climate Change Greg Barker said this week that the Green Deal programme is expected to attract capital investment of up to £15 billion in the domestic sector over the next ten years, and at its peak could support 250,000 jobs.

Barker was speaking at the launch of the Green Deal Skills Alliance in London on Thursday. The Green Deal Skills Alliance is a partnership programme of three sector skills bodies that has been set up to create qualifications frameworks for Green Deal and related industries.

The Green Deal is a new Government scheme that aims to help households and businesses become more energy efficient without having to pay for energy-saving measures up-front.

Under scheme the cost of installing domestic energy saving measures energy saving work will be repaid over time through a charge on the home’s energy bill. The repayments must obey a “golden rule” whereby the charge is no more than the expected savings, meaning householders should start benefiting from savings immediately.

The Green Deal is due to go live in October.

The Green Deal will have major implications for the skills base needed in the areas of energy assessment, certification, and both domestic and commercial energy advice.

Barker said the Green Deal also presented a great opportunity for young people. He said the Green Deal would provide excellent opportunities for them to up-skill through apprenticeships and training schemes so they would be ready to meet the challenge of the new job market.

The Green Deal Skills Alliance is running a series of free half-day events to raise awareness of the skills requirements for Green Deal.

More information is available on the Asset Skills website at this address:

http://www.assetskills.org/GreenSkills/GreenDealConnections.aspx