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When Camden tenants voted overwhelmingly against setting up an Arms length Management Organisation to run council housing they didn`t just follow a series of other ballots from Birmingham to Stockport, rejecting privatisation of council housing. They also threw government housing policy into crisis. John Prescott’s policy of bullying tenants into choosing between alternatives they don’t want is running into a brick wall. What they want is a real choice which includes staying with the council. That`s what they really want to do and it`s a betrayal that our Labour Government is blackmailing them into voting for privatisation by starving councils of money and letting council estates fester.
Time now, therefore, to change a policy which isn`t working. Instead, Housing Minister Keith Hill appears to have flipped his lid in a final frenzy to enforce it. He immediately announced that he will starve councils which reject his dictats into submission and chucked overboard our 2001 manifesto commitment to get all homes, council or housing association, up to the “decent” standard by 2010. He now says that will not apply to council tenants inconsiderate enough to want to keep the council as their landlord, as most do. So he`s proposing to take government blackmail to new heights by punishing tenants for their loyalty to Labour principles he no longer shares.
This means that council tenants all over Britain who reject stock transfer, PFI or Arms Length Management will have the ‘right to choose’ flung back in their face. The decent homes target will not cover them. Hill says ‘where tenants vote against the options that will provide the additional resources…we are not going to provide an alternative option`. That not only abandons the manifesto it also cancels what Stephen Byers and John Prescott have both said: that government will have to help tenants who vote `No`.
It`s more than time to stop this nonsense before Hill decides to abandon tenant ballots altogether and enforce privatisation at gun point. The rest of us should be clear that .we were elected to end the years of Tory misery, in which £19 billion of arrears in repairs and renovations built up, and the Tory policy was disinvestment in all housing, particularly council housing. In 1997 and 2001 the 3.5 million council tenants and their families where among our keenest voters. Instead of rewarding them we have carried on Tory privatising policies, added a few new tricks of our own and left them to stew to teach them to enjoy privatisation.
Yet stock transfer – selling off council housing to private-sector Registered Social Landlords (RSLs) - is increasingly unpopular. It`s meeting increasing resistance and it isn`t even improving housing in the areas of greatest need, which is the ODPM’s stated purpose. Between 1997 and 2002 the vast majority of the 71 stock transfers were in the least deprived areas of the country, concentrated in the shires and districts, not the areas where serious housing need has been made worse by sell-offs. Is this what John Prescott wants to be remembered for? In too many cases housing associations haven`t delivered on the delightful prospects they held out. Indeed, ODPM surveys show that satisfaction ratings have gone up only by 3% over council ownership. A lot of money has been wasted for a pathetic improvement in ratings.
As privatisation of council housing through stock transfer became more unpopular, Ministers decided to set up Arms Length Management Organisations to keep their strategy alive and avoid having to concede the direct investment without strings the tenants want. Now the Camden vote has broken the back of this two-stage process (first ALMO, eventually total transfer). That poses the obvious question: If government has extra money available for ALMOs why can’t it be given to local authorities direct?
Tenants in many authorities, including the constituency I represent, are now being told they can’t have improvements unless they accept the sell off of their homes, with the resulting loss of security and accountability. The Public Accounts Committee found this flog off unjustifiably expensive and likely to increase the costs of improvement by £1300 per home over ten years. Transfers themselves cost £435 per home in fees and charges. All that money should be spent on housing.
Council housing is and remains the cheapest, most accountable and most popular way to improve existing homes and build new ones. Indeed, council housing would pay for itself if the government allowed it. The money is there. The capital receipts from ‘right to buy’, income from tenants’ rents, savings on housing benefit (higher for tenants of private landlords) and public money now used to subsidise privatisation (debt write-offs for stock transfer, gap funding, consultants fees, etc) and lower public sector interest rates would easily fund an investment allowance freeing local authorities to provide decent, affordable, secure and accountable council homes. Particularly if this is supplemented by the borrowing on housing revenues which last year`s Local Government Bill allowed.
Councillors know this and want it. Yet they`re still being forced into feeling that they have no option but to go along with the latest ODPM dogma to tap the extra money housing needs. So most are dragging their feet. Which is why up to 200 councils are still holding back from complying with the ‘pick a privatisation option’ process, calculating that with the 2005 election almost certainly coming before the July 2005 deadline there`s little point in alienating the council estates Labour depends on. MPs have now formed a ‘Council Housing’ group and we are conducting our own enquiry into the ‘Case for Council Housing’. We need MPs, local parties and councillors, as well as tenants, to submit evidence. We want to hear what councillors think about our proposal of a ‘fourth option’ – an investment allowance to create an option for direct investment in council housing. All evidence gratefully received. So send in yours now to Parliamentary Council Housing Group, c/o Austin Mitchell MP House of Commons London SW1A 0AA or to
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It`s not too late to stand up for council housing. Elections are looming. In my constituency, as in Lambeth (Keith Hill), Hull (John Prescott) and Sedgefield (T Blair) Labour needs the council estates. We can`t afford to go on buggering them about as government policy now is.
My last early day motion demanding a policy rethink was supported by 130 MPs. More will support the new EDM 430. ‘Investment and choice for council tenants’. Which is what the government should be doing. Time for a Dear John letter which says simply: Stop the folly. End the pressure on councils and tenants. Allow a genuine choice in which council tenants can choose what they really want. Which is usually to stay with the council and retain their democratic influence over it. |
