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Tenants have waited long enough for repairs £283m
• MP Frank Dobson complained again last week (News Special, July 19) about the Lib Dem-led council’s positive proposals for bringing estates up to the standard of decent homes.
What have Camden’s MPs been doing over the years to persuade their Labour government to pay the £283 million due to Camden for the repair of their constituents’ council homes?
I predict it will still be unpaid when the council has raised some money from the sale of a few empty properties to allow much-needed work to go ahead.
How long do Mr Dobson and his government expect tenants who live on deteriorating council estates to wait while their homes fall into further and more expensive disrepair? Many people think they have waited long enough.
If Mr Dobson can now persuade his “new” government to pay up, that will be an overdue bonus.
PATRICIA HUTTON
Murray Mews, NW1
• FRANK Dobson appeared twice in the July 19 Camden New Journal. First, he is supporting council housing.
And second, he has the temerity, in reviewing Alastair Campbell’s Diaries, to comment that advisers told Tony Blair what he wanted to hear rather than what he needed to be told.
Yet he himself (a long-ago force purportedly fighting for nurses’ rights) kept extremely silent as a member of government, which has been gradually closing down, selling off and most definitely attempting to privatise the NHS, old people’s care and homes, mental care and homes, council housing and education.
He did not strongly object to the Iraq invasion and exploitation, or honourably resign as Robin Cook did, or Mo Mowlem later, and has been craven enough to allow himself to be put up as a mayoral candidate against a giant like Ken Livingstone.
Bleating away at this late stage is too little too late, Mr Dobson.
You have admirably succeeded as a compromised Blairite and kept your job, but have, to your shame, failed as a moral human being as a governor and protector of the people.
GEORGE TADIOS
address supplied
• COUNCIL tenants will have been surprised to read Frank Dobson’s comments criticising the council for finally finding a way to invest much needed money in their homes.
The single biggest issue raised on the doorsteps in Haverstock is the chronic state of Camden’s council housing.
It is heartbreaking to see the conditions that some tenants are forced to live with after Labour allowed our housing stock to fall into disrepair.
Mr Dobson and his local Labour Party tried for years to secure the investment their government had promised. By their own admission, they failed.
The suggestion that we should neglect our tenants, while continuing to wait for government money that may never come, is deeply irresponsible.
Camden tenants need help now, not at some unspecified point in the future.
CLLR MATT SANDERS
Liberal Democrat
Haverstock ward
• HAD the CNJ written its News Special on Frank Dobson and his views on local council housing at any other time I would have accepted it as an attempt to disguise his previous inability to help resolve Camden’s housing problem. On further reflection, however, I get the distinct impression that he is undertaking a blatant piece of electioneering. Has he been told to prepare for an autumn general election?
We are all acutely aware that it was the Labour government of which Mr Dobson was previously a part that refused to hand over the £283 million on offer. Subsequently the former Labour council failed to come up with any ideas to resolve Camden’s housing problem.
Now we are faced with an under-pressure MP criticising the Liberal Democrats for trying to resolve a problem of Labour’s making. An election must be in the offing.
In the run up to last year’s local elections the Liberal Democrats in Cantelowes ward received a letter from the Labour government stating that the money could not be handed over to the then Labour council because the government believed that the money should only go to “local authorities and arms-length management organisations (Almos) that deliver the highest standard of service to their tenants”.
An outright condemnation of the then Camden Labour council if ever there was one.
What is really unpalatable is that at a meeting held by the Labour Party in the Camden Irish centre all the deputy leadership candidates said that their policy towards Camden was mistaken.
This group of vote-chasing individuals were fully aware of the problems faced by Camden’s council tenants but had previously decided not to do anything about it. The Labour Party’s candidates all finally admitted that Labour had treated Camden’s council housing tenants and leaseholders in the most appalling manner by refusing to hand over the promised millions for the upkeep of council properties (CNJ page 5 June 14).
The eventual winner, Harriet Harman, agreed that Labour’s Almo policy was not only a major mistake but left Camden’s council residents feeling blackmailed. This is rather stating the obvious.
Now we have the sad sight of Frank Dobson realising that perhaps he too should get on the bandwagon. Well at least he is finally responding to pressure from the Liberal Democrats and council tenants.
DAVID SIMMONDS
Chairman of Holborn and St Pancras Liberal Democrats
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