Main parties back housing sell off

ELECTION candidates from the three major parties backed controversial plans to sell off Wycombe’s council houses at a meeting held by opponents to the plan.

Conservative Steve Baker, Labour’s Andrew Lomas and Lib Dem Steve Guy broadly backed the plan, which will be decided by a tenant vote.

It came amid anger at the lack of affordable housing for people from the district.

But Defend Council Housing said the move would lead to higher rents and less secure tenancy agreements.

Wycombe District Council chiefs say they cannot afford to maintain the homes to the best standard as half the rent cash goes to the Government – but ministers pledge to scrap this.

A 2000 vote was defeated but chiefs say the new owners would be ‘tenant led’ with seven tenants out of 15 board members on the new body, Red Kite Community Housing.

The candidates were invited to speak to tenants at the meeting, at the Reggie Goves Centre on Friday night.

Mr Lomas, who spoke first, said: “I don’t oppose the stock transfer on ideological grounds.”

Yet he said investment and expansion of the stock would ‘not happen’ under the Tory-run council, whose record on affordable homes was ‘pretty poor’.

Labour was building new homes but needed councils’ support, he said. “Around here it doesn’t seem that you have that willingness.”.

Yet he admitted the Government needed to do more but ‘we have to live in the real world as well, there is not money growing on trees’.

Liberal Democrat hopeful Steve Guy said: “It surprised me that when after 13 years of a Labour Government they still have done nothing to redress the fact that when homes are bought through right to buy they are not replaced.”

He said tenants had ‘more chance’ of voting tenants representatives off the board of the new body than voting out councillors as WDC has a clear majority of Conservatives.

Mr Guy said: “The offer that is being put to you is the lesser to evils, it is a less worse option.”

He said: “When you first start work you can’t afford to buy your own property in Wycombe district. It is impossible.”

Conservative Mr Baker said ‘contrary to what you might expect I come from quite an ordinary background’ and his experience of living in military homes was similar to tenants.

The change would put tenants ‘more in charge’ he said and the present system would leave the council in debt.

“Taking on a debt will not provide the resources needed to deliver the housing quality that you deserve,” he said.

A Tory Government would ‘incentivise’ councils to build homes ‘as they see fit’ he said.

Yet Defend Council Housing’s Paul Burnham said plans amounted to ‘privatisation’ and funding from banks and lenders ‘comes with strings’.

He said: “We will pay for it in terms of higher rents, in terms of loss of security of tenure and loss of democratic accountability.”

Lenders would demand ‘a good return on their money’ and Wycombe housing association rents were on average 13 per cent higher than WDC’s, he said.

Laws which meant housing associations can evict people for eight week’s rent arrears are ‘draconian’ he warned.

He said: “The previous policy of relying on housing associations exclusively to deliver social housing has failed because the basic housing problem remains – the lack of supply for affordable housing for ordinary people.”

While the cash hand back to Government needed to be reversed, Mr Burnham said Government policy is ‘shifting in our favour’ with thousands of homes now being built.

And he pointed to an announcement by the Government last month that it would ‘dismantle’ the cash hand back system.

Yet Jennie Ferrigno, chairman of the Wycombe Tenant and Leaseholder Committee, the official tenant body, spoke out over suggestions that the consultation was biased.

She said: “Every bit of information that is sent to tenants has to be…cleared to be honest and truthful and factual.

“That isn’t the case with some of the information you have received from other people. You have to be very very careful.” She told the BFP that DCH was ‘scaremongering’.

And Mr Baker hit out at Mr Burnham for quoting a Bucks Free Press report which said the council would gets tens of millions for the sale, which it could spend how it likes.

Mr Baker said: “You really are just speculating there in order to sow cynicism. You are speculating about the amount of money raised, you are speculating about what it would be spent on.”

The information was given to the Free Press by WDC head of homes and housing Martin Hale.

One unimpressed resident questioned why the council wanted to sell the homes when it could find £750,000 to look into moving Adams Park stadium for Wycombe Wanderers and London Wasps.

And Banaris Hussain, 31, of Plumer Road, High Wycombe told the BFP he had been waiting 12 years for a council house.

He said: “We haven’t got housing stock as it is so really they should be supporting that instead of selling them off.”

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