A letter to Gordon Brown

This is an open letter we wrote to the chancellor on the eve of the spending review:

The government says it is in favour of choice in public services yet it is denying tenants the right to choose to remain with the council and have their homes improved.

The government’s current insistence that funding for investment in tenants’ homes is conditional on accepting stock transfer, the private finance initiative or arm’s-length management does not make economic, social or political sense.

Council housing is cheaper to build, manage and maintain than the alternatives. It is uniquely accountable, secure and responsive to “joined up” regeneration strategies. It is financially viable if all rent and housing capital receipt income, along with current subsidies to privatisation through debt write-off, consultants’ and promotion costs and additional housing benefit are redirected into council housing investment. There is evidence that setting up new company structures increases the costs of management and disempowers tenants.

In 2001, there was a clear manifesto commitment to bring all homes up to the decent homes standard by 2010.

We urge you to act on the findings of the ODPM select committee report into decent homes, and to include in the spending review provision for councils to carry out housing improvements if that’s what tenants choose.

We want the fourth option – an “investment allowance” (as detailed in the ODPM’s The Way Forward For Housing Capital Finance blue-skies consultation in 2002), which would provide local authorities with a revenue stream to support borrowing and so give council housing a level playing field and tenants real choice.