Reply to comment

Ahh yes those halcian days of Labour control of Islington, replete with statues of Lenin in the Town Hall. Of course it's all very convenient for Labour politicians seeking to regain control of the council to sound off about about large bills for leaseholders caused by their own Government's £19Bn bung to the social housing contractors that was the Decent Homes scheme.

After all it was their Government which ignored the advice of it's own working party who said that "capping of (major works) service charges may appear the only immediate solution to present problems" see

http://www.lease-advice.org.uk/sswpreport.pdf

It was also their Government that encouraged so-called "partnering" agreements with said contractors that locked councils into long term agreements with a sector so chock full of bid rigging that massive abuses and over charging was the inevitable outcome. Witness the recent OFT investigation.

All of this was deeply predictable but all warnings were ignored. Leaseholders are now feeling the effects.

It is true that the previous in-house system under Islington Labour was truly awful with rampant corruption the order of the day. Standards have improved. And what about our neighbouring boroughs where council housing has always been in house? What has been the effect on leaseholders there?

Check out "Councils that issued bills greater than £10,000 over three years" and "Ten councils with the highest average bills" at

http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/story.aspx?storycode=6504635

Neighbouring basket cases Camden and Southwark both have retained stock housing departments yet their leaseholders pay more, on average, than Islington. Retained stock council housing is clearly not the panacea for all ills that some would make it out to be.

Fact is that the massive bills are a direct result of Labour's Decent Homes scheme and the contractors feeding frenzy that is the partnering agreement. Leaseholders are paying substantially toward the cost of tenants getting free kitchens and bathrooms (which is what Decent Homes was really all about) due to the fact that contractors are longer on site than with basic CREPS works and spend far more on prelims and scaffolding and the like. Much of which is just not needed for basic communal repairs and redecorating. Bung on some window replacement for the sake of it, and hey presto, you get a £20K bill. Or a £42K bill if you live in Spa Green. Recent LVTs have struck down charges for unnecessary expenses like scaffolding in order to fit internal windows on balconies that can be accessed from within and so on. But the scaffolding goes up, along with hoist lifts and the like, because of the works to tenants kitchens and bathrooms, which leaseholders are not liable for. The devil is in the detail, as ever, and it is in the ALLOCATION of costs between that which is genuinely communal and required and those costs that have nothing to do with the leaseholder ie K&B and access thereof) and new-windows-just-for the-hell-of-it-coz-we-got-a-load-of-dosh-from-central-government-to-spend.

Yes, bills need to be allocated fairly and VFM sought from the contractors. Going in house may or may not be the answer, long term. However the problems that leaseholders face are problems created directly by Labour, on both national and local levels, not to mention the total decimation of Right to Buy caused by Prescott slashing the discount to £16K back in 2005. Labour never like RTB leaseholders. It is hard to believe that voting for the party that caused all our problems in the first place will solve anything...