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Councillor Paul Dimoldenberg |
Scale of housing crisis forces Tories into a massive U-turn
Labour group leader Paul Dimoldenberg, long-time foe of Dame Shirley Porter, examines the latest twist in the saga of the Westminster
City Council ‘Homes for Votes’ scandal
WHO would have believed it?
Twenty odd years ago, Shirley Porter, Simon Milton and Robert Davis and the rest of the Westminster Conservative Party were all part of an illegal plan to win the 1990 council elections by selling council flats in marginal wards to Tory voters.
It was the biggest ever scandal in British local government history.
The whole of the machinery of the council was devoted to this illegal act and when the District Auditor finally caught up with Porter and her gang he left a £42million bill for the cost of the notorious “Homes for Votes” scandal.
Sadly, Porter never fully paid what she owed.
The Conservatives settled for just £12.3million – £30million less than she was surcharged.
Now Westminster Conservatives have spent more than £14million of public money buying back nearly 60 former council flats sold by the council in the 1980s, including eight flats sold by Shirley Porter as part of the council’s illegal Homes for Votes policy.
After years of aggressively championing the sale of council houses at knock-down prices, including the Homes for Votes policy, the Conservatives have predictably created a severe shortage of affordable homes for rent and are now being forced to buy back council flats for 10 times more than they sold them for.
Porter’s Homes for Votes policy has left an expensive legacy for Westminster residents who are continuing to pick up the bill for the council’s actions over the 1980s.
The scale of the housing crisis in Westminster has forced the Conservatives to do the biggest U-turn in their history.
Thankfully the former council flats, which have cost council tax payers an average of £250,000 each, will be used to house families currently living in temporary accommodation.
Of course, the Conservatives’ housing policy is a complete shambles.
And now the council, bailed out by the government, aims to spend over £25million buying back former council flats over the next 12 months in an attempt to increase the number of affordable flats for rent in Westminster.
For many of those families languishing in inadequate housing, a flat in Maida Vale, Church Street or Harrow Road will be very good news, indeed.
But after so much money has been squandered by the Conservatives, surely Westminster council tax payers are entitled to an explanation, if not an apology, too. I remember, all those years ago, my colleagues and I arguing that selling off council flats and not replacing them with new ones was bound to lead to a housing crisis locally.
The Conservatives belittled our concerns.
But how wrong they were!
Every Tuesday evening the Labour councillors’ advice surgeries in Church Street and Harrow Road One Stops are full of local residents living in overcrowded accommodation and desperate for an extra bedroom. But the facts are that Westminster Conservatives have not built a new flat for rent for over 25 years.
No wonder there is a housing crisis in Westminster.
And now, following the council’s disastrous and reckless investment of £17million in now-failed Icelandic banks, there is even less public money available for new homes.
Of course, the Conservatives’ spin machine is claiming that paying a quarter of a million pounds for flats originally sold for just £25,000 is a really good deal for council tax payers. But there again, doesn’t this just confirm that the Conservatives have lost all contact with economic reality?
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