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Programme is for sale of empty properties
• I SHARE tenants’ strong concerns about our council housing in Camden.
That is exactly why this new council is committed to spending nearly £500 million on our council homes.
This council cares deeply that Camden’s council tenants should not be waking up every day in homes below the government’s Decent Homes standard, some of the last council tenants in London to do so. This is a historic decision that reflects hard debate among councillors and officers, and one that should not be dismissed lightly.
This is about real improvement to the daily lives of tens of thousands of council residents – 14,000 homes need rewiring, 13,000 homes need better kitchens, 11,000 need better heating – I could go on – problems which the previous Labour council failed to sort out and which they left for us to tackle. We said we would do so in our election manifesto. We owe it to all those who voted us in, and to all those suffering sub-standard council homes, to get on with this as soon as we can.
Whereas other London boroughs have transferred their council housing stock to housing associations and to Almos – arms-length management organisations – Camden’s new council has decided not to. We respect the views of our tenants on this, as expressed in previous votes; and I think the council deserves tenants’ respect for our real commitment to council housing. We are putting our money – Camden residents’ money – very firmly where our mouth is. And I think we all deserve better than statements (Battle lines drawn up in feud over housing sell-off, December 13) by yourselves such as ‘the council agreed to enter into ‘estate regeneration’ deals with housing associations’ – this is just untrue, no such ‘deals’ are being offered, there is no strategy of transferring our important council homes to housing associations or anyone else.
There are those who are saying the tenants who backed our proposals – who outweighed those voting against by 10 to one – were somehow uninformed or misguided. But doesn’t it make sense that most of our residents would back a scheme that invests £500 million in their homes?
Having been to dozens of tenants’ meetings about this over the past year this certainly fits with what I heard – that yes, of course, people want their homes brought up to date. It’s quite natural for people to want wiring that’s safe, kitchens that aren’t falling apart, heating that keeps them warm in winter.
Where there is controversy is over the need to raise some funds towards this £500 million from sale of homes and commercial properties. I – and many others – wish this weren’t the case.
But, to be clear, the programme which the council has now agreed, and is going ahead with, is to sell only empty properties, and only properties which we cannot afford to repair, less than 10 per cent of the properties which become empty each year. And we have committed to build back as many or more new replacement homes in parallel.
I sincerely wish we weren’t selling any homes, and I know many share this view. But this government has consistently refused Camden – under Labour, and under the new council – extra funding for nearly five years now. I strongly feel that our Camden families and their children, our Camden pensioners, in total more than 50,000 Camden residents in our council homes, deserve to wait not one day longer. We firmly believe this is the right way forward, and that is why the council has now agreed this plan.
CLLR CHRIS NAYLOR
Executive Member for Housing
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