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Failure on decent homes standard
• I AM delighted that the current Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has caught up with the fact that many tens of thousands of Camden’s council tenants are waking up every day in homes below the government’s “decent homes standard” requirements.
This fact was well known to the previous Labour administration, who years ago proposed an arms-length management organisation to comply with government conditions to fund home improvements, and was, of course, confirmed to the present administration by a major independent survey last year.
This made it clear that unless we took action, homes would continue to deteriorate and, whereas currently 50 per cent fail the decent homes standard, in a few years nearly 75 per cent would fail. With government still refusing to help we have taken the responsible step to agree a way forward ourselves, and I am glad that the majority of tenants responding to our consultation last year agreed.
Officers have been in touch with the mayor’s office, and indeed I met one of his team last week and raised this with him. Apparently there is some difference of opinion about the figures and we are told rather than £4 billion being available – which is primarily to fund London’s major contribution to the government’s massive new build programme – only up to £171 million might become available for regeneration needs (we need £242 million in Camden alone), and this will have to cover the whole of London.
One wonders whether his recent comments, so many years after Camden’s distressing decent homes problems were identified, has anything to do with the forthcoming elections.
CLLR CHRIS NAYLOR
Executive Member for Housing
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