|
IAIN WATSON: Glasgow - last year's UK city
of architecture; although it's a fair bet the accolade wasn't based on
the design of the council housing. But now, something on a scale never
attempted before is happening. Labour say it's nothing short of a revolution
but it's not of the traditional, socialist variety.
All of this could soon
become a thing of the past, I'm talking about council housing. Here in
Scotland the Labour/Lib Dem coalition have plans to transfer all of Glasgow's
council homes, lock, stock and barrel, out of local authority control and
in other parts of the UK they are watching eagerly to see if they can get
away with it. But plans for the wholesale sell off of council housing in
some of Britain's biggest cities is provoking strong opposition - both
inside, as well as outside, the Labour Party.
SEAN CLERKIN: The policy of stock transfer
is a policy of gentrification - it's a form of social cleansing.
FIONA HYSLOP: We saw the consequences for
government when Scotland was used as a guinea pig for the poll tax. I
think the size and scale of the Glasgow proposal and the fact this is one
of the first ones will mean it will have big political consequences, both
in Scotland and in the UK.
LYNNE JONES MP: The new organisations will
have to raise finance on the private markets and so it will be the banks
and the financiers that eventually will be calling the shots.
WATSON: Years of under investment
means that around 1.6 billion pounds needs to be spent on Glasgow's 94,000
council homes - a sum beyond the reach of local government, because of
Treasury rules, local authorities are placed under greater supervision
than housing associations. Unlike councils, they can happily borrow large
sums without this counting as public expenditure, that means more cash
for the most needy estates.
JACKIE BAILLIE: I think stock transfers
represent an excellent way of ensuring there is radical new investment
in our stock which is much needed and that we get the wider benefits of
community ownership which is about regenerating communities across Scotland.
At the heart of this is what the tenants themselves decide because the
whole stock transfer proposal is of course subject to a full ballot of
all tenants.
HYSLOP: This whole issue is driven
by finance, by getting housing off the public books and not about tenant
empowerment and involvement. If you want tenant empowerment involvement,
you have small scale transfers, or you make sure you do it under the local
authority through devolved management.
WATSON: With two by-elections in
Glasgow this week - one for the late Donald Dewar's Westminster seat and
another for his place in the Scottish Parliament - the SNP have made housing
a key part of their campaign. But these canvassers are not politicians
- they are tenants. There will be a ballot next year to see if they want
to transfer to a specially-created, not-for-profit housing association
which would have places for residents on its board. But a campaign is
already underway for a NO vote.
ACTUALITY
CLERKIN: The tenants feel that
their rents are going to increase. That housing benefit is going to be
cut. That there's going to be more evictions and homelessness because
they won't be able to pay their rents out of their income support etcetera.
WATSON: Sean Clerkin, the leading
opponent of housing stock transfer, is not actually a tenant himself -
although more than forty tenants and residents groups have affiliated to
his campaign. The Labour-led Scottish Executive say these campaigners are
stirring up irrational fears. They say most tenants, who are on housing
benefit, won't be affected by their plans, while the rest will face only
a modest increase in rent.
BAILLIE: If you consider the experience
with housing associations, they have given guarantees that they will not
increase rent beyond the sort of rate of inflation plus one. All those
commitments have been met and if you take Glasgow as an example, you know
we've given a firm guarantee over the next five years as part of a thirty
year package for housing in Glasgow. So the assurances have been given
and indeed when you compare it to local authorities, council rents have
risen by a greater proportion.
WATSON: The campaigners against
housing stock transfer are inviting all the candidates in the Glasgow by-elections
to a public meeting. The SNP say everything's on hold unless tenants decide
to leave council control.
HYSLOP: It means there is no investment
in Glasgow housing just now, it's been on a starvation diet of investment,
waiting for this ballot. Effectively it's blackmailing the tenants and
that is completely and utterly unsatisfactory.
BAILLIE: This isn't about bribery,
this is about saying we want the best possible housing conditions in Scotland.
Frankly, you know we can achieve it in ten years or you can wait thirty
years, that's not a choice that we're prepared to make. The reality is
by going down the route of community ownership, with all the wider benefits
that that implies we are talking about being able to address all those
concerns about repairs, about improvements in the space of ten years.
WATSON: The Labour/Liberal Democrat
coalition in Scotland is being attacked from both left and right. The SNP
and Scottish Socialists say they lack the political will to invest in council
housing; the Tories blame years of mismanagement by Labour local authorities.
The tenants say there are bigger issues at stake
CLERKIN: The transfer policy is
going to lead to a mass policy of gentrification here in Glasgow, 34,000
council houses are to be knocked down and here in Drumchapel 1,000 council
houses are to be knocked down to be replaced by a thousand private houses
for sale.
WATSON: Tenants believe they are
being used as pawns in a bigger political game. Glasgow has a long history
of housing militancy, the rent strike here during the First World War has
been written into the annals of Socialist struggle. Then after the Second
World War the Local Authority filled more than half the city with council
homes. So if this bastion of old style Labour municipalism can be broken
perhaps other lesser citadels may also fall.
CLERKIN: Essentially Blair's government
wants Glasgow to go private so the rest of Britain goes private on housing.
We are confident that we'll get a No vote next year and that'll stop the
privatisation of public sector housing and essentially all the opinion
polls and all the surveys indicate that there will be a No vote.
MARK STEPHENS: The Glasgow stock transfer
could be very much a sort of Danish referendum of British housing. The
impact in Glasgow could be felt far beyond Scotland's borders - part of
new Labour's agenda is quite clearly to modernise, to use that word, local
government and this is part of it, that local government should perform
a strategic role rather than providing many of these services directly
itself.
WATSON: Birmingham - Britain's
largest landlord after Glasgow, is also looking at ways to get new investment
into housing. They're considering four options - all of which would mean
more private money, in return for less council control. A final decision
will be taken in February following a series of consultants reports. The
council says the present situation can't go on.
COUNCILLOR DENNIS MINNIS: Continuing as we are, really
is a non-starter because we don't have access to the sort of money we need.
What we do at the moment is to patch up some properties, direct some
resources here and there, but we are inundated all the time, every year,
from tenants who are saying, when are you going to get round to putting
central heating in for me, or putting double glazing in somewhere else,
or repairing the roof. The enormous task with eighty-eight thousand properties
is just unbelievable.
COUNCILLOR JOHN LINES: This council is going to spend tens
of millions of pounds in setting up this so called deal, before they've
asked the tenants. The government is not going to give them any more money
because this government doesn't trust this council, any more than the previous
Conservative one did. And what they could do is spend all that money on
carrying out the repairs to our properties for the benefit of our tenants.
WATSON: It may look as though these
repairs and improvements are happening on a council estate - but this,
according to Birmingham's Labour leadership, is really a glimpse into the
future. Tenants on this inner city estate voted by a margin of two to
one to transfer to a new community housing association, called Optima,
a little under two years ago. With a mixture of extra money from the government
and the private sector many of the improvements tenants wanted to see are
now under way. Birmingham is considering transferring all of its eighty-eight
thousand homes out of council control, but unlike Glasgow, it wants to
see ten different community-based landlords take over from day one. These
would be all modelled on Optima and would include high levels of tenant
representation.
MINNIS: Since the properties in
my ward went to Optima, I cannot recall having had one complaint about
any aspect of the housing, in that area, in terms of repairs, in terms
of environmental matters, in terms of grass cutting, in terms of problems
with lifts or doors and the whole lot, which does show that Optima is doing
it right. Now I want to get it right throughout the rest of the city and
the tenants deserve that.
JONES: I can understand why the
tenants wanted to transfer for Optima, because they would guarantee that
there would be extra investment. That is not going to be the case if you
have the whole of the ninety-thousand properties owned by Birmingham City
Council transferring. Nearly all of them need investment and it's going
to take time. It's going to be at least a ten-year programme, so people
voting are not suddenly going to find, if they transfer, that the sort
of investment that they've seen with Optima is going to become into their
homes. So people need to be told the truth.
WATSON: At a meeting in the community
hall at the heart of the estate which the new owners, Optima, now call
Attwood Green, tenants are finding out about future development plans for
their area. Unpopular tower blocks will go; new low-rise private and rented
housing will be built and a lot has already happened in eighteen months
of new ownership.
ACTUALITY
WATSON: But there's also a downside.
Tenants who moved on to the estate after the transfer pay rents that are
five per cent higher than their neighbours. Some say the price of improvement
is just too much.
TENANT 1: We're actually going
round with a petition because they want to come in next year doing fitted
kitchens that we have got to pay for and we're up in arms.
TENANT 2: One thing that Optima's
done is that now we've got the cash in the bank and we are going to do
what we said we're going to do and certainly if they don't, I mean for
one, as a tenant director, part of my job is there to make sure that they
do and I'm happy to sort of take on that role.
WATSON: The government wants to
see two-hundred-thousand homes transferred each year out of the control
of English local authorities. That would mean a decade from now, almost
half the council housing in England would be under new ownership. But
a Labour whip has told On The Record there could be opposition - especially
from northern MPs who've been councillors; they are far from convinced
that a change of ownership can improve the nation's housing. But it's
here in the West Midlands that the fightback has already begun.
JONES: We've got to press the government
to get more investment in areas like this so that...
WATSON: Lynne Jones is the MP for
the Grange Farm Drive Estate. She's being shown the effects of under-investment
by the local housing manager. The government has given undertakings to
write off Birmingham's housing debt of six-hundred-and-fifty million pounds,
but only if the council gives up ownership. Lynne Jones launched a campaign
last week aimed at persuading her own government to stop loading the system
against local councils; tenants, she says, should not feel forced to change
landlord.
JONES: They should be given a real
choice. Not a choice where they're told that the only way you can get
investment is if you vote for a transfer. That is unfair and tenants perceive
it as unfair. The government has committed itself to bringing the social
housing stock up to a decent standard in ten years and that should be available
whether tenants are in the council sector or in the registered social landlord
sector. It's a fair deal that's needed for council tenants.
STEPHENS: The government is clearly
using its powers to set the agenda, it is creating financial incentives
to encourage stock transfers, the big question is could programmes of improvement
such as those that are proposed in cities like Glasgow and Birmingham,
could these improvements be obtained within the current structure? The
answer is almost certainly no.
WATSON: There are two by-elections
this week in Glasgow, but it's the ballot of tenants next year that is
likely to have much wider implications. Their decision on whether to transfer
to a new landlord will be watched closely throughout the UK. Only then
will we know if we are witnessing the beginning of the end of council housing
in Britain.
|