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Fight to prevent any more sales of council properties
• ON my way home from attending tenants’ champion, Alan Walter’s probate meeting last week, I popped into Holborn Local History Library and dug out a few facts on council housing in Camden in the past.
They show up a stark contrast to the current policies of both national and local politicians.
A whole barrage of letters in the New Journal (Inadequate repairs and the immorality of homes sales, May 7) complained about the standard of the improvement programme being carried out by Camden Council.
Philip Colligan, the deputy housing director, amazingly states that mistakes are inevitable when adding new kitchens, bathrooms or boilers to just 350 homes. That these repairs are being paid for by selling off our council housing stock only adds insult to injury.
But in 1949 as Britain was still emerging from the war, Camden built 677 new homes from scratch in one year.
They went on completing at least one a day for the next few years, building thousands of new council homes.
In the late 1970s, as the economic recession hit, Camden still bought up 6,494 private properties for council homes in the space of three years.
These included 2,722 which were extensively modernised.
In 2009 as we face economic crisis and growing homelessness, today’s council does the complete opposite, selling council homes and threatening to turn council properties over to private renting. Of course, those who blame the national Labour government are correct. But that cannot let the Liberal Democrats and Tories in Camden off the hook.
The promise to allow new council house building made in the budget may be woefully inadequate. But it is a significant shift in government policy that has only come about because of the campaigns up and down the country to defend council housing.
Instead of local politicians blaming each other to score points it is urgent that we have a united campaign which says we are not going to allow one more council property to be sold or privately rented, and we will fight together to force the government to come up with the money that is needed.
If those that we elect don’t see sense, then perhaps we need to learn other lessons from local history and adopt some of the more militant tactics used by campaigners in the past.
Candy Udwin
Ossulston Street, NW1
Where will sell-off end?
• I READ Robin Young’s Liberal Democrat response to my letter (A disgrace? May 7) condemning the present council administration’s sale of council housing stock to private developers/ buyers and their equally unbelievable and appalling idea of getting a private firm to rent council stock to private tenants thus slashing for all time council social housing desperately wanted by those on the housing list.
I make no bones about it, I would welcome a massive funding injection by the government to local authorities to bring council housing stock up to decent standards.
I have never denied my belief in the Defend Council Housing campaign and the drive for the Fourth Option of funding for that purpose. But that does not excuse the Liberal Democrat programme of selling off what social housing there is, albeit 500 so far; or taking away badly needed social housing from those it was intended for when the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald initiated social housing (that is, those in existing poor housing especially that owned by private landlords or those living in too small a flat for a large family or those seeking accessible accommodation for disabled people.
We councillors, I would point out to Mr Young, are the trustees of council properties and facilities and we have no right to sell off what was built by our predecessors over the past as council housing stock for those in need of decent homes.
That there are funds stashed away by this council is still my view and that of many others and I ask the present Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition running Camden to deny that and that these funds built up by slashing grants to the voluntary sector, for example, or selling off council housing or selling the freehold of such properties to leaseholders should be used to bring homes up to decent standards.
Generations of local councillors worked hard, as I know from my early days as a young councillor in 1964 on Camden Council, to build up our social housing stock; to modernise pre-war flats which I am proud to say I organised.
Housing to us was, and is, always a social service and we will fight now to make sure it is kept for that purpose as long as we have breath in our bodies.
I don’t make excuses for lack of central government funding ;
Margaret Beckett, minister for housing has now promised funding, but it would only be for 2,500 homes and this is not enough. But I also cannot see any real excuse for Camden Council selling off what belongs to the people and what would give a decent life to families and individuals on our housing waiting list.
What is the point, Mr Young, in bidding for flats under the Home Connections scheme when those flats on offer are inferior as many have been sold off now?
Sorry, Mr Young, take out your wrath on your Liberal Democrat colleagues for causing what seems likely, an end to social housing and absolute encouragement for private landlords whose raison d’être is sheer profit and damn all else.
This council is also selling off the Town Hall extension for private flats; selling off the Camden Centre for private flats, and so on. Where is this to end?
I hope in 2010, Labour will win the council elections and we have councillors who care for social housing.
Cllr Roger Robinson
Opposition Lead on Housing
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