Wednesday, 10 May 2006 17:45
Austin has written to Ruth Kelly, the new Communities and Local Government Minister, about council housing.
Wednesday, 01 July 2009 14:14
PRESS RELEASE
AUSTIN MITCHELL MP 1 July 2009
Tel: 020 7219 4559
The Council Housing Group of MPs welcomes John Healey’s announcement today that councils will be able to retain all of their rents from council housing and the proceeds of their Right to Buy sales.
This concedes the Fourth Option and the level playing field we and Defend Council Housing have been fighting for, for several years.
Our congratulations to the new Minister.
We regret, however, that this major and necessary change to the policies the Government has misguidedly followed since 1997 comes too late to generate the big council housing building drive the country needs
We urge the Government to introduce the changes immediately and to put a moratorium on Large Scale Voluntary Transfers until the financial basis on which these can occur has been totally recalculated. We also urge a housing development grant for councils to put them back into the building game and put builders back to work urgently. Remember, this Government has only 10 months to go and it needs to use that time to atone for the housing failures of 10 years. Britain needs a strong and healthy public rented housing sector to provide decent affordable democratically controlled and socially mixed housing for the large proportion who can’t afford to buy.
Austin Mitchell
Chair, Council Housing Group of MPs
Monday, 01 September 2003 00:00
NOT IN MY BACKYARD. I LIVE NEXT DOOR TO PRESCOTT
You may have got the impression that I’m not exactly well disposed to flogging off council houses. Flog-Off isn’t Labour Party policy. I’m not even sure its government policy either. When I asked ministers in the ODPM to explain it to my local Tenant’s Assembly I didn’t even get a reply. I cant even get the DPM himself to come to Grimsby to defend the policy though he’s assured of a warm welcome. If the audience is allowed to bring firewood.
Read more: Not in My Backyard - Article For Inside Housing Magazine, September 2003
Saturday, 01 March 2003 00:00
In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of New Zealand. Well, at least mine do, because I’m there with the Environment Select Committee to look at New Zealand Agriculture. So how about a look at New Zealand Housing for a change?
Saturday, 01 February 2003 00:00
Housing is a field of such complexity and so many vested interests that the gaps between promises and performance are paralleled only in promises of eternal life. We promise to shift the main weight of building from green to brownfield sites. But can`t. We promise to make house buying easier by the kind of seller survey purchase pack I proposed in my House Buyers` Bill in 1983.
Read more: HOUSE MAGAZINE ARTICLE ON LEASHOLD HOUSING FEBRUARY 2003
Saturday, 01 February 2003 00:00
Housing is one of those glass half empty or half full issues. Labour can claim to have improved things. It has certainly spent more money. Yet nothing like enough to prevent the backlog of repairs and renovations building up or to satisfy the growing demand for social housing from those unable to buy their own. We haven`t had an adequate level of total building - down thirty percent since 1979 - making this the first Labour government to fail at housing, an issue relegated to benign neglect, lacking the high priority it once had and still needs.
Read more: HOUSE MAGAZINE ARTICLE FEBRUARY 2003 - HOUSING FAILURE
Tuesday, 01 October 2002 00:00
Never go to Party Conferences to look for exciting new ideas on housing. You’d be better employed in Disneyland. Conferences are now top down affairs, not bubbling debates from the bottom. Leaders posture before followers, and problems are left behind in Whitehall cupboards, not brought to the seaside. Lots of new initiatives (usually old ones dusted down) are announced but the rank and file, particularly councillors who know what`s happening on the ground, have to sit and mutter incredulously, while being forced to applaud because it`s all on camera.
Saturday, 01 December 2001 00:00
Housing is one of the four great basics of the good society. Yet New Labour has boosted Health and Education enormously while the other basics: Housing and Welfare, have been neglected and relegated to penny pinching irrelevance.