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Number 10 E-petition heads campaign to restore funding for social housing
Thousands of social housing tenants from across England have been urged to sign an online petition posted on the 10 Downing Street website calling for ministers to honour their financial pledges to bring 150,000 properties up to the Government’s Decent Homes standard.
The online petition is the first stage of a wider initiative
involving the NFA with the aim of changing government policy.
It follows the July announcement by Housing Minister, John Healey,
that the Government would transfer £150m from the 2009-11
Decent Homes programme, depriving any ALMO not yet rated Two Stars,
the guarantee of Decent Homes funding for planned individual decent
homes projects.
The decision will directly affect up to 300,000 ALMO tenants as
well as many more individuals and businesses in the wider
community.
The Number 10 petition is calling for “the Prime Minister to
ensure that all Arms Length Management Organisations who qualify
immediately receive all the Decent Homes programme funding promised
them.”
The campaign is backed by the National Federation of ALMOs (NFA)
whose 69 member organisations manage over 1 million council homes.
The NFA works closely with tenants from the 12 ALMOs affected,
advising on how best to make their case to ministers and has
commissioned a research document exploring the benefits of Decent
Homes.
It shows how living in a Decent Home-standard property - warm,
dry, weatherproof, in a reasonable state of repair and with
reasonably modern facilities - does not merely boost health and
wellbeing, but also improve tenants’ lives via home
security/crime reduction, community cohesion, educational
attainment, lifelong achievement, jobs and apprenticeships.
The study includes testimony from tenants about how the state of
currently unimproved homes damages their lives; the financial costs
and job losses at contractors whose order books have been hit; and
the potential penalties for ALMOs who have had to cancel building
contracts.
The decision to withdraw funding from the 12 ALMOs has had an
immediate effect on both tenants and contractors – just as
the building industry and employment have been hit hard by the
recession – as well as the organisations themselves, many of
which were formed specifically to unlock Decent Homes funding.
NFA Chair, Alison Inman, reported huge disappointment among the
tenants in ALMO-managed properties who will not now enjoy the
improvements to their homes they were promised. She said:
“The upgrades are vital for people who are often
society’s most disadvantaged and vulnerable. The planned home
improvements are not merely a matter of comfort, but are essential
to the health and wellbeing of tenants. This is why people feel so
let down and why there is such great impetus for what will be a
wide-ranging campaign.”
Before the Decent Homes programme’s introduction, 2.1m homes
did not reach a decent standard. Now as a result of Government
funding, 82 per cent of housing is ‘Decent’, 250,000 of
which is managed by ALMOs.
Funding has been delayed to support a new house building
initiative. Alison Inman stressed that the NFA supports this
programme, but that it makes no sense to fund it at the expense of
improvements to existing stock. She added:
“There is a desperate need in this country for new affordable
social housing – and indeed many of our members want the
right to build new homes - but we believe the Government is making
a serious error of judgement.
“Given there will shortly be five million people on council
waiting lists, it is essential that we continue to maintain and
improve existing stock, because new build alone will never satisfy
demand. Certainly financing it partly by reducing money allocated
to the Decent Homes programme is not the right solution.”
To sign the petition, visit
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/DecentHomes/
