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Published: 17 May 2007

Hold your nerve, we are winning the housing fight

The government’s plans to privatise council housing are in real trouble, argues Alan Walter

ON the day Gordon Brown announced he was standing for Labour Leader he got the Daily Mirror to run ‘Tough borrowing rules stopping town halls building a new generation of council homes are expected to be relaxed’ (Daily Mirror May 12th).
We’ve done what many said was impossible and forced council housing to the top of the political agenda.
Now we’ve got to turn sound bites into concrete proposals that enable councils like Camden to improve all our homes and estates; maintain those improvements for years to come and start building a new generation of first class council housing for those who want and need it.
It’s ‘encouraging’. We’ve now got a discussion about councils being able to borrow against rental income, changes to the existing housing finance regime and how councils run their individual Housing Revenue Accounts and the national HRA.
At the Labour Deputy Leadership hustings debate tonight (Institute of Education) most of the candidates talked about the need to be ‘pragmatic’ about tackling the needs of council housing. That’s a start – now they all need to be asked to make a firm commitment to implement the ‘Fourth Option’ for council housing backed by the last three Labour Party conferences.
The driver behind this policy review is the sustained opposition by council tenants – supported by trade unions, councillors and MPs – to privatisation by stock transfer, PFI or ALMOs, and the fact that the private housing market is clearly failing to satisfy need.
‘Market forces’ has never provided homes for the people – they’re only interested in building for profit. And all the government’s attempts at Shared or Low Cost Home Ownership schemes only scratch the surface (and only 15 per cent of those subsidised were ex council or housing association tenants).
The fact is that even if you subsidise entry into ownership it’s beyond the reach of millions.
Anyway ‘what’s wrong with having a first class public rented sector’? Most of the UK’s three million council tenants and the 1.6 million households on England’s council waiting lists want a decent home, don’t want the uncertainty of property prices booming and crashing and are happy to rent ‘decent’, ‘affordable’, ‘secure’ and ‘accountable’ council housing.
In Camden council tenants have continually rejected the blackmail and bribes of new kitchens and bathrooms to defend council housing. It’s not some abstract principle. We can see what privatisation has meant in other services and what’s happened in many areas that have lost council homes.
We believe that council housing is worth fighting for – for us and our children.
We haven’t given up on securing the investment to improve our homes and estates. The £283 million offered to Camden conditional on the ALMO should be ours by right if ‘choice’ means anything.
Our elected councillors and Camden’s two MPs have a responsibility to actively represent our interests by backing this demand – that means more than just writing a few letters (credit to Frank Dobson, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, for actively supporting our campaign).
Camden Council could do all sorts of things to help change government policy: it could put support for the ‘Fourth Option’ on the TV News like it successfully has on other issues; it could support tenants’ campaigning and galvanise authorities across London and it could back our proposal for a London wide conference of tenants, local authorities and trade unions. That would all help to maximise pressure on government at this crucial point in the campaign.
What it can’t do – unless it wants the biggest political battle Camden has ever seen – is to pursue it’s latest proposals and make a third attempt to privatise Camden homes.
The new proposals to sell off individual street properties and ‘regenerate’ (privatise) some council estates would give the government’s discredited privatisation agenda support just when its in real difficulty.
Camden would be selling off council housing (in ‘mixed communities’) when the next Prime Minister is talking about allowing councils to build new homes and calling for more ‘mix’! Tenants reps got another round of council one-sided bullying in the written report to the Joint District Management Committee meeting on May 1.
They said government was demanding Camden provide a stock options appraisal (housing strategy) and “We have to submit this in outline in May” with the suggestion that tenants would lose out if they didn’t.
The report also argues “there appears to be no immediate prospect of Government declaring a ‘fourth way’ and coming up with additional funding”.
No one can be stupid enough to guarantee the outcome (although we know there are no financial penalties that government could impose on Camden tenants) but Inside Housing magazine clearly thinks the current debate is more positive.
It’s editorial on March 30 said “serious negotations are taking place in Labour Party circles to come up with a way forward… surely it can’t continue to prove an impossible task…If ministers mean what they say about giving more of a say to communities, they need to move forward constructively even if they don’t like what’s been said.”
On May 1 in a packed Council Chamber tenants reps passed the following motion with only three votes against:
“This Joint DMC is opposed to Camden Council submitting a new stock options appraisal that involves transfer, demolition, PFI, sale of individual properties or land. Camden tenants want the council to actively campaign for a change in government policy and [believe] that this is the only way to achieve Decent Homes and improvements to our estates.
We call on the council to lead a joint deputation of councillors (cross party) and tenants to meet Ministers; work with Barking and Dagenham and other councils and sponsor a London wide conference to lobby government for the ‘Fourth Option’.”
Two ‘workshops’ of tenants organised by the council last week backed the same motion overwhelmingly.
A deputation will be addressing the Council Executive next Wednesday to press the point home.
We need the support of every council tenant in Camden – and all those who believe in winning investment to improve existing and build new council homes.

* Alan Walter is chair of Peckwater Tenant and Residents Association and chair of the national Defend Council Housing Campaign.

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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