Is this the end of decency?

Credit: Michael Grieve

Next week's local election in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets is a litmus test for the government's embattled Decent Homes policy.

In most boroughs, stock transfer has not been an issue that has divided the political parties. Since Labour's formal embrace of the Tories' stock transfer policy in the 1990s, opponents have largely been confined to a left-wing rump.

But in Tower Hamlets, the picture is very different. There, tenants are being presented with a clear choice about who should own and manage their housing. The mainstream parties are all lining up behind the council's Housing Choice programme, which proposes the transfer of the borough's homes on an estate by estate basis to individual registered social landlords.

But George Galloway's Respect Party, which ousted Bethnal Green's Labour MP Oona King in last year's general election, has promised to keep hold of the borough's housing stock if it takes control of the authority.

A good result for Respect would further embolden the anti-transfer campaign at a time when the unions are increasingly seeking to use their political clout in the Labour Party to reverse its policy and when ODPM minister David Miliband is looking to replace Decent Homes with a broader approach to estates regeneration.

Housing has always been a thorny issue in the politics of Tower Hamlets, where more than half of the population rent from a housing association or the council. This is also the place where England's first council homes were built, on the Boundary Estate in Shoreditch at the turn of the 20th century.

Respect's strong opposition to the council's stock transfer plans helped the party buoy support at last year's general election. But things have soured for Galloway. Even Respect supporters admit that their flamboyant MP's antics on Big Brother have alienated supporters. Meanwhile, Labour and Liberal Democrat supporters, bitter rivals since the early 1990s, are preparing to vote tactically to keep Respect out. Many believe that Labour may perform unexpectedly well on 4 May.

To help turn down the political temperature before May's polls, Tower Hamlets suspended the Housing Choice programme following a series of ballots in December, which saw five out of seven estates reject the transfer option.

David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, became so concerned about the damage that Respect's accusations were causing to the RSL movement's credibility that he challenged Galloway to a public debate. RSLs claim that their staff have been subjected to harassment by opponents, although they are anxious not to blame anyone.

So what do the voters think of all this? Regenerate asked two Tower Hamlets residents.

Pawla Cottage

Credit: Michael Grieve

Pawla Cottage lives in a council flat on Tower Hamlets council's Columbia Estate, designed by the legendary modernist architect Berthold Lubetkin. And she wants it to stay that way. Over the past year, she has become a leading campaigner against the authority's plans to transfer the estate to the Guinness Trust.

A former advice worker and lawyer, she got involved in the campaign against the stock transfer when she became unhappy about the way it was being conducted. "My gut feeling was that it is wrong to give away public housing to a housing association, billions of pounds worth of land being handed over."

We have been flooded with crap for the last three years. You couldn’t move for Guinness Trust people

Pawla Cottage

A lot of her ire is directed at the tenants steering group set up to oversee the transfer process on behalf of the other residents. "I asked lots of questions, but they just accepted what they were being told. My biggest bugbear was that the steering group hadn't asked what the service charge was going to be. To me, that's the first question you should ask."

She rejects the suggestion that the campaign against stock transfer has been highly organised, expressing surprise at how rapidly it has taken off. The turning point, she believes, was the Wapping tenants' rejection before Christmas of proposals to transfer their estate to Guinness. "We didn't believe the result because we thought it was a foregone conclusion that the transfer would go ahead. Guinness were gob-smacked. With the time and investment they put into it, they thought they had it in the bag.

"We have been flooded with crap for the last three years. You couldn't move for Guinness Trust people. They were like people selling double-glazing, only with modern selling techniques." But she says such tactics have alienated tenants. "We don't like it and people are telling them to sod off."

One of the central issues for the anti-transfer campaign is rent levels. Cottage says Guinness' existing tenants are paying more for much older properties. She points out that the government policy to bring council and housing association rents into line doesn't cover service charges. "They don't mention the service charge and that's what goes up. A lot of people think that it's covered by housing benefit, which the government wants to change, so we're not out of the woods on that."

The other big concern is security of tenure. Housing association tenants have assured as opposed to secure tenancies. "I don't care how they dress it up; I used to be a lawyer, you can't fob me off on this. Even if they write agreements to emulate secure tenancy, statute prevails over contract law. Once ordinary people twig that, they won't want to give up their secure tenancy."

She rejects the arguments that the anti-transfer campaign is leading tenants up the garden path of continued under-investment. She argues that the £10m needed to refurbish the Columbia could be financed by the £2m annual rental income that the estate generates each year, plus capital receipts from right-to-buy sales, provided those sums were ring-fenced and not siphoned off into other projects. "The transfer is a short-term solution. The more estates vote ‘no', the more pressure there is on the government. You even see MPs that have influence over Blair beginning to waver, like Gerald Kaufman."

But already the transfer process has divided the community, says Cottage. "People who are pro are very hostile to us. They snub us in the street. It pits neighbour against neighbour and tenants against leaseholders."

The passions generated by the transfer have mingled with local opposition to Crisis and Genesis Housing Group's plans to build its innovative 18-storey Urban Village project to house key workers and former homeless people on the adjacent Mildmay Hospital site. "I'm not in principle against that because it's about housing single homeless people. I don't like what some of the people campaigning against it are saying."

The idea that the transfer is designed to create private development opportunities worries many. "When I moved into Tower Hamlets, nobody wanted to live here. Now the richer people want to live here, and they want to get us out and the easiest way to do it is to price us out, which is why we want to keep our secure tenancies."

Fiona Lawrence (right)

Credit: Michael Grieve

The sight of mushrooms growing out of her neighbour's wall helped to convince Fiona Lawrence (above, right) that the status quo was not an option for her estate's future.

Lawrence, who has lived on Shoreditch's historic Boundary Estate for the past 16 years, voted against plans to transfer her home to a registered social landlord when the idea was last mooted in the late 1990s.

The intervening years have seen little success by Tower Hamlets council in fixing the problems of the Boundary. Lawrence saw the consequences of that under-investment a few months ago when she walked into a neighbour's flat, where running water from a leaky upstairs boiler had seeped in through the wall.

I often feel that the only reason that the council would notice me would be if my rent wasn’t paid

Fiona Lawrence

"The people downstairs had mushrooms, like you have in a forest, growing out of the walls," she recalls. "With the water seeping in, it was like a rainforest. Everything was nicely humidified and all these wonderful fungi were growing. These things take a long time to grow, which gives you an idea of how long it had been neglected by the council."

This incident is typical of the approach that cash-strapped Tower Hamlets takes to the estate's problems, she claims. "At the moment, things are only dealt with when there's a severe problem. I had a problem when one of my neighbours had an overflowing pipe. Besides the noise, it was soaking the wall.

"I started getting black patches. The council finally came and did plaster work in the flat. By then, of course, it wasn't a minor repair. Somebody came in and did a really crappy job E E of plaster work, it wasn't skimmed or anything. That's the sort of thing that really makes me angry. Because of a lack of care about the consequences, what was a minor problem turned into a really major one.

"If you have a stairwell that is dangerous, they are willing to repair it, but Southern [Housing Group] are willing to give the whole block an MOT and repair it before it becomes dangerous. You don't have to be a builder to tell that these places are in dire need of attention. It's clear that the council won't or can't do the improvements that are required in this building."

For Lawrence, the key selling point of the proposal to transfer the estate to Southern Housing Group is the £23m worth of investment it will attract. As well as new kitchens and bathrooms, Southern has said it will insulate the Edwardian blocks, replace the estate's antiquated boilers and provide communal satellite dishes.

The last sounds relatively trivial, but it isn't for Bangladeshi tenants, who have to hack illegal holes in the estate's listed Arts and Crafts-style brickwork to watch programmes in their native tongue.

Lawrence dismisses anti-transfer campaigners' arguments that they should stay with the council. "It's been made very clear to us that the council can't or won't do the investment that's required. If we're given a viable option we should look at it. That's not to say that I am a 100% pro-transfer, but it's not an ideal world and we should consider that option."

She also hopes that Southern will restore services like the one-stop shop that Tower Hamlets used to operate on the estate. "It was becoming a happy estate," she says. "When we had the one-stop shop, you would see people out there cleaning up the mess and people would be talking to each other. Within a year of the one-stop shop going, all of that had stopped. That feeling of responsibility and care had disappeared. Hopefully, the community themselves will start to wake up like they did before."

By contrast, the management feels very remote now. "I often feel that the only reason that the council would notice me would be if my rent wasn't paid," she says.

Although she has not personally suffered any intimidation from anti-transfer activists, Lawrence is concerned that elderly residents in particular are being peddled misinformation.

"There's scaremongering about the rent going up, but they are controlled almost as much as the council. And they are a not-for-profit organisation, so I feel reasonably protected. I don't feel that they will increase the rents to £150 a week."

She dismisses the argument that the council is more accountable because it can be voted out of office. "The same people are going to be working in the office. I don't care if Southern have a nominated board as long as they do the job. If the job is done correctly, it doesn't matter."

She is far more concerned by the consequences of Respect taking control. "I am terrified. This has happened before: when we voted no, I think we were punished. The buildings were neglected, it was almost as if there was a go slow. A lot of people are nervous that if we vote no again any investment that we require will be put on the lowest priority. There's a lot of nervousness that a bad situation will be made worse."