Improving our tenants’ homes is right priority

Published: 25 February 2010

• YOUR article (Bonanza at expense of taxpayers February 18) is misleading in many ways.
Camden Council is, as you report, selling a small number of empty homes that are in need of repairs we can’t afford to make.
Government rules require us to sell only to developers – we would much rather sell to Camden residents instead – and these properties are sold in open auction, just as other London councils do, to ensure we get the best price we can.
Of course, they each have various problems of disrepair, some quite major, so to ensure these repairs are fixed and the houses brought back into use we impose strict legal conditions which inevitably reduce the number of developers willing to take a chance.
To take just one case, you suggest a large profit was made on one property “quickly”.
In fact the dates you have shows there was nearly 18 months’ work on the house, which resulted in it being remodelled as an expensive family home with three reception rooms and five bedrooms and, indeed, you have taken no account of the costs of such major works in your figures.
I am confident that our priority of getting Camden tenants’ homes up to standard is absolutely right.
So far we have sold just 50 such homes which were previously tenanted and already delivered nearly 10,000 new kitchens, bathrooms, rewirings.
Whereas, as the report you have shows, the previous council under Labour sold 183 homes voluntarily in the five years before we were elected – and where did the funds raised go then? Not into Decent Homes.
We are forced into this because our homes have been allowed to get into such disrepair, far worse than in neighbouring boroughs, such as Brent, Islington, Westminster, where most homes were modernised years ago, and because the government has not given us the additional funding we need to invest in our housing, the £283million we were promised.
Our tenants deserve better. So we are getting on with getting all our homes up to standard.
And we committed to building back new council homes to replace those sold, and I’m delighted to say we are now confirming plans to build 63 new family-size council flats – the first council building in Camden for decades – which will start on site this year.
CLLR CHRIS NAYLOR
Executive Member for Homes and Housing Strategy