Hull: ‘we don’t need extra cash for decent homes’

One of the country’s worst-performing councils says it can meet the decent homes standard without transferring its stock.

The cabinet of Hull council was due to recommend that the local authority keep its 31,279 homes at a council meeting yesterday.

However, the council has been under Whitehall supervision since 2003 and got no stars for maintenance in an Audit Commission inspection of July 2004.

This followed a leaked draft of a commission report that said the council’s housing revenue account was heading for insolvency in 2002 (HT 23 May 2002, page 1).

The Labour-led council now insists its housing revenue account is in surplus and it plans to use the account to back its stock retention plan.

The council intends to spend a total of £224m bringing its stock up to the decency standard by 2010 (“Where will the money come from?”, below).

Hull’s councillors have not been able to agree on whether tenants would prefer their homes to be retained by the council or transferred to a registered social landlord.

Liberal Democrat councillors said a statement from tenant representatives had concluded that, though the steering group was divided, “the best option for the future of the council’s homes would be to transfer to an RSL”.

But Labour councillor Stephen Bayes, Hull’s housing portfolio holder, said the council had conducted a postal survey of tenants in which 66% had opted for retention of the stock.

Opposition councillors in Hull and the Local Government Association have expressed doubt over whether Hull has the resources to meet the standard.

Liberal Democrat councillor Karen Woods said she expected the council to approve retention of the stock at Thursday’s meeting, but added that the council could not be certain it would have enough money. She said:

“The council cannot guarantee that they’ll get the receipts they expect from right-to-buy sales.”

The Local Government Association also cast doubt on Hull’s ability to meet the standard without extra funds.

Richard Kemp, deputy chair of the LGA’s environment committee, said: “I don’t see how they can show they have the money to reach decent homes – it’s an iffy decision. If I was the government, I’d be asking a lot of questions.”

But Bayes said he was confident the council could meet the standard without the need to transfer its stock.

He said: “We don’t have a problem with money, we have a £15m surplus in our housing revenue account – the predictions of a decline into a negative HRA were over-egged.

“There’s no doubt we can meet the standard though government and the Audit Commission will still have to sign off the process.”

In July last year, an ODPM supervisor said Hull’s recovery plan, intended to assess the scale of investment needed to meet decent homes, was unfit (HT 2 July 2004, page 13).

A spokesman for the ODPM said: “We have to wait until they make the decision. Local authorities have a responsibility to ensure they meet the decent homes standard and they have to ensure that tenants make the decision about how they do it.”

The government has to approve local authorities’ plans to meet the decent homes standard by July 2005.