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By RICHARD OSLEY
 

David Miliband
Ministers to meet rebels over homes deadlock

HOUSING ministers have agreed to meet with rebel Labour MPs and trade unionists in a new effort to break the deadlock over funding for council homes.
For the first time in a long-running row, ministers David Miliband and Yvette Cooper have agreed to explore ways in which councils that want to retain their properties can be helped financially.
They have set-up a working group committee to review the options for local authorities, a significant development according to tenant activists in Camden who have demanded direct financial help for the past two years.
Camden has been starved of the millions of pounds it needs to bring homes up to national standards after falling foul of the government’s decision to only provide cash for authorities that agreed to transfer their homes to outside bodies.
Residents said, in 2003, they would not accept a switch to an Arms-Length Management Organisation (Almo), a new company with a board of councillors, tenants and appointees, and instead wanted to keep the council as their landlords.
Labour backbenchers, including Holborn and St Pancras MP Frank Dobson, have demanded that the money is sent to Camden in traditional, direct investment.
The message was hammered home at last September’s party conference in Brighton
when delegates demanded the choice to retain properties as well as receiving funding for repairs. Austin Mitchell, a chief campaigner in the lobby for direct investment, told the New Journal on Friday that gains had been made since then and the spring conference in Blackpool earlier this month.
He said: “In the past, John Prescott refused to meet with us. He wouldn’t have any meetings. There would be no money from the government unless council stock had to be given over to the private sector. That is wrong and it is encouraging that the two new ministers, David Miliband and Yvette Cooper, are looking at the options again.”
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