housing: privatisation costs
WORKERS, MAY 2003 ISSUE
The cost of transferring housing stock from local authority control has been exposed by government's own National Audit Office. To meet the transfer target over the next five years will cost £1.3 billion more than if local authorities were given the money to improve homes themselves.
Defend Council Housing national committee member Alan Walter said the report vindicated the anti-transfer movement: “Set against a background where tenants have not been allowed to stay with councils, we have been right to say this is not value for money and is basically about ripping tenants off.”
Lord Rooker, the Housing Minister, has tried to claim that the benefits outweigh the expense. He cites more tenant participation in decisions affecting their homes and a greater sense of ownership and involvement in local regeneration. Opponents say such local involvement can be encouraged in many different ways, none of which would need to involve the asset stripping of council housing stock. Cash-strapped councils have little choice but to go along with this.
Stockport council recently spent £1.5 million in a failed attempt to persuade tenants to transfer its 13,000 homes. This defeat is another blow to the transfer programme and shows that tenants can decide what is in their real interests.