"Tenants Optimism and Government Disarray" - from Defend Council Housing

Tenants, councillors, council officers and trade unionists from thirty areas gave evidence to the inquiry organised by the House of Commons Council Housing group of MPs at Parliament last Tuesday (March 8th).

140 people from across the country took part making it a hugely successful event. A wide range of evidence was given to MPs (see below). Both MPs and councillors expressed the view that it is only a matter of time before Ministers are forced to announce concessions on the "fourth option".

The latest government figures show that their privatisation programme is in disarray. More councils are declaring for stock retention, and there is a low take-up for the next round of transfers and ALMOs (see the DCH website).

There are also energetic local campaigns in a number of areas facing ballots. Let us know what your council is doing and how we can help. In a sure sign of nervousness, and pure desperation to keep the transfer programme going, the government has caved in to pressure from lenders and dropped its plans to tie stock transfer gap funding to the performance of the landlord. (Inside Housing, 11 March).

Yet on March 3rd Housing Minister Keith Hill, speaking in a Commons debate on Decent Homes, said "We are under an obligation to ensure that where we provide extra resources, we also drive up performance."

Ministers are clearly getting squeezed between a rock and a hard place. This is further proof that privatisation is bad value for money. Please contact your MP and use this example to get him/her to sign the current motion in Parliament and back the demand for the "fourth option". [HI comment - This is DCH's point of view. Hackney Independent does not see parliamentary motions as a priority].

A further sign that the privatisation programme is hitting the buffers was the news that the Community Housing Task Force, set up to "enhance the stock transfer product", is being disbanded. The Task Force has been central to driving councils to stock transfer and ALMO.

Amusingly, Phil Morgan, chief executive of TPAS (an ODPM/landlord funded organisation that acts as so-called Independent Tenants Advisors), expressed concern that the remaining councils "are either ones where people have been loathe to go through the process or are very difficult and demanding. They are precisely the ones that you need the expertise of the CHTF to operate on". (Inside Housing).

TPAS regularly tries to eject tenants distributing DCH material at public meetings and refused a request from Austin Mitchell MP to help publicise the group's first inquiry session last year.

We need to get this information out to tenants, trade unionists and councillors. Can you help organise a fringe meeting at the Local Government Association Conference, trade union conferences or a major public meeting in your area/region? Have you distributed the latest DCH newspaper?

For more information, see http://www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk