April 27, 2010 at 8:05 am | Posted in London | Comments Off on Contempt for council tenants in Hammersmith and Fulham
Tags: council tenants, Dogma driven, hammersmith, housing, social housing
Hammersmith & Fulham Council’s Decent Homes Regeneration Policy is reported to envisage large scale reduction of council homes.
But the Tories complain it is “hard to get rid of people” from their homes.
Their contempt for tenants is clear. A council memo describes council housing as “barracks for the poor” and “warehousing poverty”.
The Tory Leader, Stephen Greenhalgh, Conservative Home’s Local Hero of 2008, has told his Tory colleagues that public housing is an “asset” but which “delivers a risible return”. His solution is the end of social housing:
“To continue building and publicly investing in the “social rent” template which provides tenancies for life with no incentive or requirement to work or to move on which locks investment and people into properties makes no sense.”
The Tory goal is to gain profit from peoples’ homes and drive forward the Conservative philosophy of market rents and scrapping security of tenure, while encouraging expensive, upmarket flats.
Like David Cameron, Stephen Greenhalgh says one thing to the public and another to his Tory colleagues. He told Hammersmith & Fulham tenants in the council newspaper:
“We are giving a cast-iron guarantee that where renewal opportunities arise all council tenants will be offered a permanent home in the area.”
But he told fellow Tories:
“The problems inherent in trying to move households from one property to another when they cease to fulfill a ‘need’ condition would be solved by having just one form of tenancy, modelled on Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST)….In almost all cases we would expect the initial term of the AST to be 6 months as is standard in the private rental market.”
Stephen Greenhalgh heads up the Tory Councils Innovation Unit and advises the Cameron team on their future plans. Putting these plans in across the country would mean that the eight million people in council or housing association homes would see their rents double or triple, be forced to move onto six month tenancies and have their security of tenure cut to a two-month notice to quit.
Watch a video from The Guardian on Hammersmith & Fulham
Information from Stephen Cowan, Leader of the Labour Group, Hammersmith and Fulham.
April 21, 2010 at 8:05 am | Posted in London | Comments Off on Slashing investment in homes, threatening recovery
Tags: hammersmith, House Builders Federation, housing, Saying one thing, Spelman, Threat to recovery
Last year, Caroline Spelman, Cameron’s Local Government Shadow, wrote to all Tory Councils, urging them to cut the financial ground from under builders by delaying housing building and commercial and business developments.
The Housebuilders Federation have called Tory plans “high risk” potentially having “unintended consequences” and posing “significant concerns” for the housebuilding industry and “would lead to a hiatus in planning for housing.”
Spelman told her Tory Councils last year that a Tory government would back them by looking to bring in legislation to “revoke the Regional Spatial Strategies” (which help deliver the new housing) and urged Tory Town Halls,
“Even before primary legislation is passed, local authorities will have the ability to put the brakes on elements of Regional Spatial Strategies which they find undesirable.”
And to back up the threat to builders who start construction on new housing
later blocked by a Tory Government, said:
“We will not pay a penny of compensation.”
Whilst Caroline Spelman tries to block new house building, the Tory Housing Shadow says to The Observer,
“We are unabashed about the need for more housing.”
The Tories are saying one thing and doing another on housing and their plans are high risk and would be a threat to the recovery.
April 20, 2010 at 11:29 am | Posted in London | Comments Off on Paying for essential care
Tags: elderly, hammersmith, London, personal care, Unfairness
Conservative Hammersmith & Fulham broke a manifesto commitment to
bring in a new £12.40 home care charge for essential care. A leaked council
email shows that people receiving care said they had to go without after
receiving the bill, meaning that only those who can pay get the services they
needed.
Cameron's Councils 