Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor: Housing responsibilities cannot be shrugged off

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Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor
Published: 8 November 2007

Housing responsibilities cannot be shrugged off

• A PAPERis before the council to dispose of our present caretaking system and to bring in instead private firms to caretake on our estates.
Local councillors and tenants and residents associations will then find it impossible to raise queries and complaints on caretaking with the district housing offices and will also be ignored by these private firms whose knowledge of estate issues and tenant concerns is zero. Getting rid of our caretakers is another way forward to getting rid of our housing altogether.
There have recently been discussions and papers on the future of the patch managers who mainly do a great job at local level on estates and who will also be decreased in numbers as will the estate managers – again passing the control to private property companies . The district housing offices, five at present, will be decreased so making it even harder for councillors to get through to anyone to take up issues on estates.
There is a distinct lack of land available in Camden and the country as a whole to build more social housing. We have the situation in Camden of the land behind the British Library owned by Department for Culture, Media and Sport and not Camden where we could build many more homes towards the three million target but the bidders are mostly luxury housing developers and we are seeking Camden’s intervention at this stage to compulsory purchase the land or purchase it so that Camden can build social housing.
There is a distinct lack of three, four and five-bedroom properties to accommodate larger families and accessible properties for disabled people and in Camden a severe lack of potential building land given the previous council administration has already agreed the King’s Cross development which in itself does not offer enough social housing and concentrates on luxury housing.
The council now says it has £15 million to spend on refurbishment from all its other cuts.
To that I would add that the whole use of contractors has to be rethought as, in the main, they have not provided a good service and section 20 leaseholders are forced to meet higher and higher costs for worsening work and refurbishments. In some cases in my ward people are being forced to pay over 36 months sums as high as £45,000!
My view is that we should cease using contractors and re-establish the former council-supervised and controlled direct labour force where greater control can take place and the profit margin for the contractor is no longer passed to the leaseholders.
Tenants and ward councillors like me challenge the council on its obvious plans to sell off council homes and use the funds to repair those it does not sell. We want the government to produce for every local authority finance to build new homes and we do not think that building three million of these is sufficient. What we don’t want are PFI schemes, arms-length management organisations, and disposal of council land and properties to the Rachman landlords. That will reduce more and more the availability of properties for which tenants can bid.
We simply cannot pursue the line that local authorities cut back on their housing services or sell off their properties.
In our borough there are 30,000 on the waiting list and no spare land to build on.
Local authorities set up council housing at the turn of the last century to meet the problems faced by those living in slums and we cannot now shrug off our responsibilities.
We need a return to the view that council housing is a social service.
CLLR Roger Robinson
Opposition lead on housing

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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