Tenants 'excluded' from review of council housing finances

Two-and-a-half million council tenants are being effectively excluded from a key Government review of council housing finances, it was claimed today.

In a letter to Housing Minister Iain Wright today, Defend Council Housing chair Alan Walter accused the Government of conducting the review 'behind closed doors'.

Last December former Housing Minister Yvette Cooper promised that the Government's Housing Revenue Account Subsidy Review would "ensure that we have a sustainable, long term system for financing council housing" and "consider evidence about the need to spend on management, maintenance and repairs".

But Defend Council Housing claims this is happening without tenant involvement.

Alan Walter wrote: "While the ‘Great and the Good’ in the housing world are participating in one round after another of free lunches associated with your review (presumably at our expense one way or another) there is almost no tenant involvement.

"Three tenants out of nearly 100 people on the working groups says it all. This hardly meets the rhetoric we so often hear from politicians, civil servants, council officers and consultants about putting tenants at the heart of policy making.

"Most tenants know nothing about this review even though the outcome will affect the lives of 2.5 million households living in council homes and the two million households the LGA predicts on housing waiting lists by 2010.

"Almost nothing is being done to encourage tenants around the country to understand the issues being discussed – never mind contribute to the discussion."

Defend Council Housing and the House of Commons Council Housing group are holding a meeting at 6pm on Monday July 14 in the Grimmond Room, Port Cullis House, Westminster, to give tenants a chance to respond to the review.

The meeting will discuss a draft submission setting out the case for ending the robbery from tenants rents and capital receipts and funding council housing so that councils can improve existing, build new and maintain all council homes as first class housing for years to come.