In the debate about whether to transfer or retain council housing, supporters of retention always end up mentioning at some point the high quality of the housing stock and the care taken of it by the council in the past.
Personally, although I support retention, I think this is rubbish. You only have to look around the ‘courts’ area of Broadfield to see some seriously neglected houses still in council ownership. During my brief time as a councillor I used to find it almost impossible to penetrate the depths of the housing department to get things done sometimes.
In contrast, even my own housing association is more responsive, and so are others that I have dealt with.
If the experience of other councils is anything to go by, Sunderland being the best example, the biggest winners in a stock transfer are the staff of the housing department who get TUPE’d across, especially the more senior staff who end up as directors with much larger salaries.
A more cynical person than me might amost suspect them of running down the stock to make transfer more likely… the alternative is that they can’t help presiding over a sub-standard service so how would transfer improve anything if the same people are in charge?
Why I support retention is that I think there is at least a chance to put pressure on the housing department to improve itself while it is part of the council. Make it autonomous and there is no chance at all.
There is another controversy about the council’s housing department at the moment, which may or may not be related to all the transfer machinations, and that is the strange case of the dodgy invoices.
This came to light during the special council meeting in a way which totally confused me because most of the Labour councillors seemed to know nothing about it, which surprised me since I had known about it before the meeting and kind of assumed that everyone else did.
The bottom line is that invoices were submitted to the council by contractors for work which was not carried out. It appears that last summer 30 out of 50 invoices submitted had ‘discrepancies’ and now, following the imposition of a series of checks the level of discrepancies has fallen to only about 8 out of 50.
What the hell is going on?
Last summer the Labour party was in charge, and yet those who were in charge at the time seem to know nothing about it. Was this investigated by the officers without telling them? And how can anyone be satisfied with a level of discrepancies now of 16%? The only way that is good is in comparison to last year. In absolute terms it is appalling.
The chief executive of the council is quoted as saying “we strongly resist the accusations that there is fraud or corruption taking placeâ€. I think that either there is some fraud going on, or some rank incompetence. Not necessarily within the council, but more likely with some of the contractors, although the housing department must have been a bit slack in checking work to have not noticed this without having a councillor bring it up.
So the housing department had a higher authority (the chief exec) step in and impose some checks, which have improved matters, and investigations are still going on. If the housing stock was transferred, there would not be such a higher authority…
Like I said, I am against the transfer anyway, but even if I was in favour I would not want to see the housing department set up as an autonomous body until it showed more ability to function efficiently.
I have to say that I tend to support the externalisation of council housing either through transfer or ALMO. In part because I don’t think that large bureaucracies are very good at treating the needs of individuals as the most important thing they’ve got to do today. But mostly because I hoped and still believe that this was the most likely route to get the investment in housing needed.
I’ve been reading this paper, which puts the argument quite for doing something different with housing:
I’m not sure that its track record in directly managing housing is altogether a shining example of the best of local government.
That said it does have a significant role to play in developing leading and enabling strategies which improve the public relm, and which help citizens to fulfil their potential.
I know I am probably guilty of knee-jerk old-labourism in resisting change, but I don’t find your reasons compelling.
Your main reason for supporting externalisation is about getting investment for new build, but the reason councils can’t get it is an artificial situation – I would look to getting that changed (the level playing field) and save sell-offs as a last resort.
I agree about the large bureaucracies, but transfer a housing dept staff under TUPE and its still as large. It just does not have other depts alongside it.
I am sure that there is a better way to manage social housing but I do not think that what is proposed for us is it so I tend to resist the change until some better way comes along, that way we still have the option to decide whether to move to any better way.
I do understand your impulse that no deal can sometimes be better than a bad deal and if there were other funding mechanisms on the table I’d expect they would be in the mix.
Of course there is a level of direct investment in Lewisham, as elsewhere, but nowhere near enough to meet our Decent Homes commitments. What I’d hate to see would be some kind of planning blight as we play chicken with the government about the mechanisms for investing.
The tenants and residents that I used to represent need the investment now not in another decade.
I’d tend to agree that there’s no point in externalising the whole thing to one single organisation; as you point out that just transfers the issues of scale to the RSL or ALMO.
In Lewisham we’ve gone for a mix and match approach where tenants and residents have had a significant say in choosing the approach that they think will work for them. We’ve seen some decide they would like to have ownership transfered to a co-op they control, some seem to want particular RSLs to come and run their estates and others feel more comfortable with and ALMO.
Its difficult to compare the two places, especially as I don’t know anything about Lewisham’s housing stock or finance (despite having lived there for a long time in the past) and you may not know much about Crawley’s situation.
We have (I think) about 8000 council-owned properties. The proposal is to set up a new RSL to own/manage all of them and any new ones it builds. Initially it would be staffed by those council housing staff who transfer.
In terms of finance, there is an amount needed to bring all properties up to the decent homes standard. The latest estimate of this amount is £10 million – but that is the figure being quoted by the Tories to justify a transfer which they want anyway.
The council has over £90 million in reserves and is debt-free. It always has been debt-free.
We are not a poor town 🙂 This is probably the reason why we are on the losing side of the redistribution of council house rent and sales revenue. Our council tax is lower than the average for the County (I think)
So we do not have a debt-laden council which cannot raise the money for repairs. We do, however, have a council which uses the interest on its reserves to subsidise its spending and reduce council tax.
As it stands, if the money was spent there would be either an increase in council tax or a cut in service, or both. Another option would be to take one of the council’s big resource-drains and transfer that to a trust or sell it off – so the savings would offset the loss of interest income.
Lots of big choices. All the facilities which cost a lot are held as dearly in the collective Labour heart as the council houses – but the Tories would be a lot less reluctant to be rid of the theatre or the football stadium or the rare breeds farm. Of course they would want to do that so they could cut taxes and would hate to see the money go towards enabling council housing to be kept in-house.
It seems like there is no good option – just a variety of bad ones, where someone has to decide which is less bad.
One interesting thought. I may not know about Lewisham, but I think that at least one of the senior officers at our council spent some time there, possibly in the housing department.
If your flexible mix & match approach works well, as I’m sure it does, our council will know all about it and must have made a conscious decision not to go that way.
As you say, I know less nothing about Crawley and your outline of the position is very different from the position Lewisham is making decisions about.
I’m sure that your position and that of the Labour Party/Group is motivated by what the best option is for residents in Crawley.
Surely the 10 Million valuation is from an independent body not the Tories themselves?
My personal hope is that The Labour government stop acting like Tories and get the playing field even, before its too late! While they spend there time wondering if they can make it fair, councils up and down the country are causing distress to a great deal of people, if Government are to make it fair with the 4th option or whatever, then for god sake do it now before it’s too late!