Minutes:
General Question 1 from Councillor Mullane:
“I would like to congratulate this Council on the proposed redevelopment of the Leys estate. Would the Cabinet Member for housing be able to assure me that within this estate renewal the overwhelming majority of properties will be Council homes and have the leaseholders as the private properties? And would the Cabinet Member also confirm that there will be a robust referral system in place to ensure the estate renewal meets these stipulations?”
Response from Councillor P Waker, Cabinet Member for Housing:
“I would like to thank Councillor Mullane for her question, which is arguably a little premature as it is an issue that we will deal with in the medium term once it has been decided how and when people are moved out of the estate renewal areas and what is pulled down and when in the three areas involved.
There is a working party, with a representative on it from each of the three wards, currently looking at this. However, there are a few matters still to be dealt with before we can really start to move ahead on all three areas.
The first is a Call-In to be heard by the Living and Working Select Committee next week. This was put in after the previous formal report to the Cabinet. I am sure this can be dealt with satisfactorily, after which a follow-up report will go to the 28September Cabinet meeting. This is being prepared at the moment and adjusted to take in to account the views expressed by Cabinet Members and others.
We will then be focusing on the money required to empty out the flats involved (known as decanting) and the settling of matters with leaseholders so that we can then demolish the flats. It should be noted that new programme of Council house building will help us enormously in this decanting process. Our task is to maximize what we can get for Council rent in order to help the people on our list.
The degree of success we have on this depends on the amount of money we have available at that point. We can get a certain amount of council housing by putting land value in, but beyond that, it is as simple as this. The more money we can put up, the more we get for rent and while I cannot today give a figure, my commitment is to do the very best we can.
All the reports we put on this matter do highlight a number of possible sources of money:
1. Firstly, we would obviously want to apply for grants or access any funding that might become available, albeit we know we are likely to be in some difficult times.
2. We have also highlighted the possibility of a land sale. I would not call this my personal favourite option, but it is one that if we decided the time was right and could get a good deal, we have to have this in our armoury, in case it was required.
3. We are also hopeful that changes to the national Housing Revenue Account arrangements will help us down the line, and this is looking a real possibility, as most councils across the country are recognizing the value of the offer we fought to get from the last government. This is a far cry from last year when we stepped up our long-term campaign on this, but made clear that we would be up for a reasonable deal and taking on a reasonable burden of the national housing debt, or so-called housing debt, in return for keeping all of our own tenants rent money in the future.
4. Another option is income generation in Housing by making better use of resources or in getting revenue savings to the HRA by getting better value for money for what we purchase either outside or inside the council. As well as buying other council services at better value or not using services that are unnecessary because we can do it cheaper ourselves, I am confident that progress to increase available housing revenue will be made here as well.
5. A further alternative is to use some of the Housing Capital Budget because we will be saving on repairing the declining estates once we knock them down. Again, I would not regard that as the first option if it can be avoided because of all the other things we need to do for the places we are not knocking down, but it is another funding option.
Money for the estate renewal has not been easy to come by in recent years, but there are plans to localize some use of national housing money and that is where the London Mayor’s role could be increasingly important in the future.
Incidentally, while we will be campaigning for a change of Mayor next year, Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, has chosen to come to Barking and Dagenham next week and has a panel discussion on the supply of housing. As a member of the panel, part of my message to the Mayor will be that unlike some boroughs, we want to build Council housing and he should help us to do that. Also we have people living in bad conditions that we want to change and that he should be assisting us to do this as well.
The Mayor needs to understand that in our area, a large percentage of our population cannot afford to buy and, in many cases, cannot afford part-buy or intermediate housing either.
These are some of the reasons that we need to build Council housing to replace our poor estates as soon as we can, and that goes for areas such as Marks Gate as well. The number of Council properties is clearly the issue this question raises and while it is not a matter of having a referral system, because it decisions have to go through the democratic bodies of the Council in line with its constitution, I certainly hope that we can, at the very least, end up with a similar percentage of Council housing to private as we have now, at least in overall terms.
We now need to work together to do the best we can for all our residents in this borough and I know we can unite in fighting to maximize what we can produce in terms of Council housing, much needed for people who have now waited long enough.”
General Question 2 from Councillor McDermott:
“Would the Cabinet Member for Housing like to give his thoughts on the recent announcement by the Prime Minister of ending the notion of Secured Tenancy? Under the proposals, families whose homes are under occupied, or net income afford them the ability to rent within the private sector, will have to vacate their premises. And does the Cabinet Member agree that this Council should do everything to oppose this ill-thought out piece of legislation?”
Response from Councillor P Waker, Cabinet Member for Housing:
“I have given some thought to this and the first thing I want to say is that David Cameron’s statement on this was a cynical Government excuse to avoid supporting Councils to build council housing. It is a cheap and insulting attempt to find easy answers to this in what looks to become another abysmal coalition failure.
Let me first deal with matter of under-occupation - we do try to help with this and move those who are under-occupying and are willing to move, and we try to find something acceptable to them. At the moment, we are fortunate to have back an officer who is very good at this and good at finding acceptable answers for people. We have, in fact, been able to increase this to two officers on the basis of linking in Housing Associations to do this as well and we take a hand-holding approach with great success rather than a payment or bribe-type of approach.
There are many reasons for people wanting to downsize. Sometimes it is a matter of age and people wanting somewhere smaller. We should be able to do this voluntarily and without forcing it on people with a jackboot type approach. That is entirely wrong in my view.
Someone who has lived in their Council house for 30 years, for example, sees his or her children grow up, loves living where he or she is living, should not be forced out. It is treating tenants like second class citizens to others and I do not think that is right either.
It came home to me recently when someone who bought their Council house – a person with 3 bedrooms living alone said that the elderly woman nearby, a tenant, should perhaps give her place up forcibly.
I worked out that if a Council house was bought at the discount price about 25 years ago, it would have been bought for about £16,000 and another house was then out of our Council stock and never at any point available to someone else. The tenant who did not buy, however, has probably paid us something like £50,000, maybe £70,000 in rent over those same years; whether those payments were paid by their own money or by benefits, the Council has received that money. Furthermore, we still have the property available in our stock when she does move on or sadly passes on.
I then ask myself why the person who bought should have a greater
security of tenure than the tenant? Why should
one be treated less favourably than the other just because her
house is still going to be available at some point for other people
rather than sold?
In relation to the other point in the question, secure tenure being removed because of a person’s income, it then puts Council housing on a means tested basis and once again we would have to say your pay has gone up a little, here we come, let’s bring the jackboot once again to stamp over your rights.
Council housing should not become ghettos for poor people. We should fight that sort of approach.
Council housing is both a legitimate and a fair form of housing people and should not be looked down on by millionaire Tories.
A mixed community in Council housing is much better for society and such a move would simply force more people into the private renting nightmare that simply means one person having any extra income they might earn at some stage being drained away to make landlords richer. I can understand someone with the odd place to rent out, but some people are making a business out of other people’s misery and some of those landlords are very poor indeed. Not all of them, but too many of them.
The whole idea of attacking the security of tenure is typical Toryism; I do not and will not support the idea and I hope we as a Council will do all we can to stop such a move happening.
I want to see first class housing for first class citizens and more of it and not riches for some at the expense of poverty for others.”
General Question 3 from Councillor Twomey:
"In light of the newspaper headlines of Thursday 19August - “Toddler could lose sight in one eye from infection in dogs poo”, could the lead Member please inform the Assembly as to what Barking & Dagenham are currently doing to tackle this increasing problem?
I frequently walk around the borough and also visit several parks on a regular basis, including Pondfield, Parsloes, Mayesbrook and Greatfields and I am disgusted to see the level of dogs foul on both the streets and in the parks.
The Council has recently set up a new initiative, “the Parks Safer Neighbourhood team” and I know that there has been some success with dealing with this issue within the parks.
In my own ward this problem also highlights other issues such as the keeping of dangerous dogs and the fact that a number of residents in tower blocks seem to be keeping dogs.
I would ask, firstly, if we could consider some campaigns, encompassing both the parks and the streets, to raise awareness of this common problem and also target the people responsible for this in terms of joint working with the local police etc?
And, secondly, with the new localisation agenda, would it be possible to look into by-laws regarding the tighter control of dogs within the borough to tackle all of the above issues?"
Response from Councillor Alexander, Cabinet Member for Crime, Justice and Communities, on behalf of Councillor Collins, Cabinet Member for Culture and Sport:
“No one would disagree with the question. The Parks Police are doing a brilliant job and something that we will be raising with them and the street wardens is to challenge people who allow their dogs to foul the parks and streets.
There are by-laws that we do enforce but we have asked officers to look at this and they will be coming back to us. What I would like is for a group of us to get together and find a positive way forward through a co-ordinated approach. This should include the Police in relation to the dangerous dogs aspect.”