LONDON VAUXHALL DEALERS

Shelter's new report on home repossession risk hotspots in England shows London boroughs distributed intriguingly throughout the national local authority league table. We might expect to find Richmond and right Royal Kensington and Chelsea at the secure, lower end of the scale, with rates of claims by mortgage lenders running at, respectively, 1.39 per 1,000 private homes and 1.3.

We might not be surprised to see Barking and Dagenham ranked number one in the land, with 8.44 repossession claims per 1,000, followed in fourth place by Lewisham (6.46), Newham (ninth, on 6.07) and Greenwich (twelfth, on 5.88) - as Shelter says, "Higher rates of possession claims are strongly associated with higher and increasing rates of unemployment," and those tend to be higher in the authorities with the highest rates of possession claims.

But why, for instance, are high unemployment Haringey (2.97) and Tower Hamlets (3.26) in the mid-section of the list, along with more prosperous Sutton (3.14), Ealing (3.13) and Bromley (2.77)?

I don't have comprehensive answers to such questions and neither does Shelter - that wasn't the purpose of this research - although it tells me that in Barking and Dagenham there's been a fall-off in sales in the last roughly five years while prices have remained pretty stable. That means it would be harder for someone struggling to pay their mortgage having lost their job to sell their home before the repossession process started. This might be might be a specific local factor contributing to the borough's high claim rate.

Read the repossession hotspots research here. After that, take a look at Shelter's eviction risk monitor published last December, which presents data relating to both mortgage lenders and private sector landlords in England. In this case, London dominates the higher national league positions, filling nine of the top 25. Top of the pile? Barking and Dagenham, with Newham second and Haringey third. This is not good. Hello, Mayor Johnson. Anything to say?