Liverpool council’s last 16,000 homes must be transferred

Liverpool council is planning to transfer its last remaining council homes because it would cost £85.3m more than the value of the stock to bring them up to the decent homes standard.

The council will submit a bid to the ODPM for £85m, which would be used to cover the shortfall when transferring the 16,000 homes.

It is likely that this will be one of the first bids for some of the £180m announced in the comprehensive spending review to help councils fund negative equity stock transfers (HT 16 July, page 8).

Ownership of the vast majority of Liverpool’s council housing – more than 60,000 homes – has already been transferred to registered social landlords in six transfers in the last 10 years.

A stock options appraisal carried out by consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was delivered to the council’s executive board two weeks ago, concluded stock transfer was the only way the council could improve some of the worst social housing in the city.

Its findings have been accepted by the council leadership.

The local authority says it hopes the association that gets the stock will have mutual status, or some degree of tenant involvement, though details have yet to be finalised and will be subject to consultation with tenants.

Charlie Parker, the council’s regeneration executive director, said: “The basic idea is it will be a tenant-led proposal but using some form of mutual model, which will be defined in conjunction with tenants shortly.”

The stock options appraisal found the cost of maintaining and improving the homes over 30 years would be £880m.

It concluded that if the present situation were to continue, the authority’s housing revenue account would go into the red – which would be illegal – by 2006.

The council will submit its bid for funding to the ODPM by the end of this year and work out a business plan early next year.

It hopes to be among the ODPM’s tranche of stock transfers set to be announced next autumn. Tenants would be balloted in 2006.

Jonathan Blackie, regional director of the Government Office North East and chair of the regional housing board, said: “A no vote mustn’t mean that we sit on our hands. We have got to move forward and housing is an important part of that. We have got a clear time-table and we have got a programme of managing the resources that we have.”

Michael Laing, director of housing services for Wear Valley council, added: “I think in terms of housing the regional agenda continues.”