Councillor Julian Fulbrook: ‘We’ll take our time on council homes wreckage’
Published: 03 June 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY
THE Town Hall’s new housing chief has warned the new Labour cabinet will not be rushed into making decisions over how to fund improvement work on council homes.
Councillor Julian Fulbrook said he was dealing with the “wreckage” of four years of Liberal Democrat and Conservative control of the Town Hall.
“They had four years to come up with a solution and didn’t manage it – so we will be forgiven for taking a few weeks to look at the options,” he said. “The work on Decent Homes, installing new kitchens and bathrooms, for next year won’t stop. That has been covered financially. What we will be looking at is what happens beyond that.”
Officials have already worked up a new report explaining how Camden might be able to raise funds now that a programme of controversial council home sales has been stopped. It will be discussed at a cabinet meeting next week.
Options include asking the government for cash, reducing the borough-wide refurbishment scheme’s costs, and untested prudential borrowing.
“We were quick to put the handbrake on council home sales,” said Cllr Fulbrook. “Developers were making almost double their money by flipping. We’ve stopped that. I don’t think we will get any money from Cameron and Clegg, so we have to look at what else we can do.”
He said he was not convinced by the idea that council flats could be rented out on the private market to make money in the short term – and instead plans to concentrate on the cost of contracts covering refurbishment work.
“In some cases we are looking at thousands of pounds for every home,” said Cllr Fulbrook. “If you looked in the back of the New Journal and saw people who advertise for work like fitting kitchens and bathrooms, you could probably get it done cheaper.
“What I have said from the off is that white trunking for cables across people’s living rooms has to go. It wouldn’t be acceptable in my house or the chief officers’ houses, so why should council tenants have to have it? The brief to my mind is very simple: collect the rents and get value for money from it for the tenants.”
Lib Dem councillor Chris Naylor, the former housing chief, said: “Tenants have been living in sub-standard conditions for a decade, so the new executive member should not take too long deciding what he is going to do.”
He added: “I welcome the commitment to look again at the contracts, although we had already asked for this and lower costs were already taken into account.”
Asked what he thought of Cllr Fulbrook’s comments about a “wreckage”, Cllr Naylor said: “When we came in
in 2006, no electrical or fire safety checks had been done on estates. We had to get all that done.”