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Who can tenants trust in May’s council elections?
• FOR most council tenants in Camden, the idea of a government punishing council tenants in Camden for democratically rejecting the arm’s-length management organisation (Almo) is deplorable.
In his ministerial statement of June 30, John Healey says: “We remain committed to completing our comprehensive Decent Homes programme and to maintain this standard.
“The reforms I propose will safeguard this commitment.
“Capital funding will be provided to support this. We also intend to complete improvements required to common areas of estates and will ensure that there is sufficient funding in the system to maintain them in the future.”
The latest letter from Mr Healey to Camden’s leadership is blatantly contradictory and gives Camden an alibi.
This follows an alibi from Camden when they were consulting on their stock options appraisal last summer.
They let central government off the hook by revealing that they had a plan to raise the money for the Decent Homes programme if government did not come up with the funds.
Did Camden really think government would say “good of you to offer, but don’t bother, we will pay”?
Council tenants in Camden are not interested in alibis.
We have a right to decent homes and have paid enough in our rents for this.
Tenants have a track record of punishing politicians who go back on their words, or let them down.
We are not interested in the council letting the government off the hook, and vice versa, while council housing stocks are being decimated in favour of privatisation options – thousands of council homes lost under successive administrations to stock transfers, Almos, right to buy, and so on.
What is the Liberal Democrat policy as a national political party on selling off council homes to fund the Decent Homes programme?
We only ask because while in Camden they are selling them off, it is our understanding that in Lambeth they are opposing the ruling Labour council for adopting exactly the same policy.
Of course, it follows that the same could be asked about Labour as a political party! Who should thousands of council tenants trust in Camden at the local elections next May?
Derek Jarman
Vice-chair,
Camden Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations
But Lib Dems did tell us so – time and again
• CAMDEN Liberal Democrats need not have resisted “a told-you-so attitude” about the latest Labour government refusal to release money once (long ago) offered to bring Camden Council homes up to decent standard.
After all, the Liberal Democrats did tell us so – repeatedly, year after year, and it was always quite clear to me that, on this issue at least, they were right. Since the rejection of the Almo there has never been any chance the Labour government would relent and pay up.
Those who pretended otherwise were just peddling pipe dreams, and deserved to be ignored. Credit to Camden’s present Liberal Democrat-led administration for taking tough decisions in the interests of council house tenants, who Labour would have abandoned to live in slums.
Abdus Shaheed
Godwin Court
Crowndale Road, NW1
Labour did nothing
• IF Councillor Theo Blackwell honestly thinks that a group of tenants, councillors and “Old Labour” MPs marching in Whitehall would have persuaded the government to change its mind and hand over £283million to do up Camden’s houses, why didn’t he organise it? He would have got the credit and the people he purports to be so concerned about would have got their decent homes. The truth is, he knows it would have made no difference.
All the candidates to be deputy leader of the Labour Party agreed Camden tenants should get the money. They did nothing. For heaven’s sake, the New Journal itself triumphantly collared the Prime Minister. Nothing.
And the council persistently made the case, over and over again, to the people in government who could make the decision. Nothing.
So what were the council to do?
Just wring their hands and allow the housing stock to deteriorate even more? Shrug their shoulders and leave tenants in misery? No. They got on and made the best of the very bad job that the Labour government and the previous Camden Labour administration had made for Camden’s tenants.
Nobody likes to sell council property. Perhaps even Cllr Blackwell was uncomfortable when he and his Labour colleagues sold thousands of good council homes and shovelled the money into the Treasury coffers.
But they did it. And now they forget they did it.
The government shut the door years ago.
Other ways have to be found. Luckily the present Camden administration faced
up to that, sold some dilapidated property and the improvement work is under way.
Running the council is never easy. It is going to get even harder with the recession.
And the opposition must face that as honestly and realistically as the administration. Perhaps that is why Cllr Blackwell is getting out?
Huw Prior
Royal College Street, NW1
Repeating
• I WONDER how many councillors are suffering from indigestion. I am sure Keith Moffitt must be after eating such a big red herring at the Lib Dem conference – I refer, of course, to the letter from the Labour housing minister. I also think Labour councillors must have indigestion from eating their hats over written and verbal comments over the past few weeks.
Dave Hoefling
Werrington Street, NW1
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