Society daily 04.02.2010

Today's top stories Bulger killer identity not safe in jail, Straw warned Treasury to set out £11bn spending cuts Legal aid body abolished Hospital suspends heart surgery after four children die Rural communities in jeopardy as young people forced out All Society stories Other news * An independent investigation of health secretary Andy Burnham's "preferred provider" NHS policy has been halted after primary care trusts were ordered to suspend procurement for community services, reports the Financial Times. * A bishop has warned that clergy who refuse to marry gay and lesbian couples will be sued for discrimination , the Times reports. Room for improvement More than a million children are trapped in overcrowded homes - with living rooms and kitchens being used as bedrooms - as the number of people living in cramped conditions rises, says new research by Shelter . The housing and homelessness charity calculates that the number of overcrowded households has risen to more than 650,000, the highest level for more than 14 years. The charity claims the government has broken its pledge to address the problem. Six years after ministers promised to update the "overcrowding standard" - originally created to help ease conditions in slums in the interwar years - the government is, Shelter says, "now going back on its commitment". This means that, by law, a family of five living in a one-bedroom flat could be classed as not living in overcrowded accommodation, the charity explains. It claims the government is reluctant to alter this because it fears the figures for overcrowding would worsen dramatically. Campbell Robb, chief executive of Shelter , says: "Overcrowding is a huge blight on children's lives ... It is simply unacceptable for this antiquated standard to remain in place, allowing kitchens and living rooms to be considered as acceptable places for children to sleep." England and Wales are the only two countries in the European Union with no legally binding minimum space standards for all housing. Although there are minimum space standards for social housing, there is no minimum floor space standard for privately developed homes. Research by the thinktank Policy Exchange showed that compared with other EU member states the UK has the smallest newly built dwellings and the smallest average room size. The average size of a room in a newly built dwelling in France, for example, is 26.9 sq metres compared with only 15.8 sq metres in the UK. The government says it is working towards resolving the issue of overcrowding but that changing the way overcrowding is measured needed "the right processes [to be] in place". It says there is £7.5bn of government investment earmarked for housing - and this would ensure more "family-size homes" were available. "We're making sure that by 2010-11 a third of new affordable homes have three or more bedrooms," said a spokesman. Society links Sign up to Society daily email briefing Society on Twitter SocietyGuardian.co.uk Public - the Guardian's website for senior public sector executives Get ahead: the Guardian's public and voluntary sector careers page Hundreds of public and voluntary sector jobs Email the SocietyGuardian editor: [email protected]