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Brown offers new hope of home repairs cash
• IT shows how out of touch Lib Dems and Tories are when they say there is no hope of the government giving money for council house repairs. Suddenly, with Gordon Brown about to take over, everything is shifting.
Education Secretary Alan Johnson, one of the favourites for deputy leader, said at the weekend he would back the right of councils to build homes again where local people had rejected plans for private or social landlords to take over their estates.
This shows things are changing at the heart of government.
The trouble is the Lib Dem-Tory administration has come up with its own ideologically-driven solution to raise money by selling off homes as luxury flats, and any negotiation will be almost impossible now.
In Gospel Oak, the three Tory councillors said they were on the side of council tenants and residents. I’m afraid two of them at least may find they have been naïve and cruelly used by their party.
SALLY GIMSON
Chairwoman, Gospel Oak Labour branch
Oak Village, NW5
• AS a Camden tenant, I am disturbed by what is happening to council housing.
It cannot be denied the right-to-buy policy is partly responsible for the diminishing housing stock.
Where I live, no original purchasers remain in residence, having either sold or sub-let with astonishing profit. The right-to-buy should be phased out.
It now appears the new council is determined to sell off even more properties to pay for needed repairs. Instead, they should be spearheading a campaign to persuade the government to release, unconditionally, the money still available for the work.
Householders would support them. This was proved by the Arms’-Length Management Organisation (Almo) referendum when, despite the Labour council, with its glossy pamphlets urging us to accept the proposition, it was thrown out conclusively.
Finally, whether or not Councillor Alexis Rowell’s plans to change council heating systems is proved justifiable (and where is the proof?), we should be concerned that a private company would be involved and free to set and collect charges imposed on householders.
Without doubt, charges would rise considerably, as the company met the demands of its shareholders for high dividends.
The borough needs rent-only council housing not private housing. Councillor Naylor: “You’re fired.”
NAME AND ADDRESS SUPPLIED
• COUNCILLOR James King writes on the subject of council housing renovations: “We cannot go on practising the politics of ‘follow the rainbow’.” (We cannot wait for Brown’s pot of gold, May 17).
Glad to hear it. However, “a realistic plan” should not include selling off 500 council properties. Here is a much more palatable one.
A meeting of council tenants’ representatives was held at the Town Hall on May 7. A representative from chartered surveyors Savills (commissioned by the council) provided costings for the proposed maintenance and renovation of council housing for the next 30 years. These greatly exceeded the money currently available to the council.
However, there was something very odd about these costings. To take two items everyone can understand, kitchens and bathrooms. Savills costed these at £4,000 per kitchen and £2,000 per bathroom. Four years ago the estimated cost was £6,000 for a kitchen and £6,000 for a bathroom. Miraculously, in four years, despite inflation, the cost has reduced by half.
There are 14,000 kitchens and bathrooms to be replaced so that means a difference of £84 million between the costings. That absurdly large difference must raise questions about the worth of such estimates, even when prepared by third parties for the council.
But the Savills’ costings are still seriously overpriced. During the Almo campaign I got estimates from MFI for equivalent kitchens and bathrooms fully fitted. Each could have been supplied and fitted for £1,500. That was for me as a retail customer. Anyone offering a contract for 14,000 units should have been able to get at least a third off the retail price.
It is a reasonable assumption that, if the estimates for kitchens and bathrooms are seriously overpriced, everything else will be.
What are we to make of this? The obvious conclusion to draw is that the council is working on seriously inflated estimates and that, if realistic costings were made, it could, in all probability, do the work required within the constraints of the money it actually has and thus have no need to sell council property.
It is time for the council to look at the cost of maintenance and renovation and ask why it pays such inflated prices.
ROBERT HENDERSON
Chalton Street, NW1 |
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