Labour has had years to look at the options on housing

Published: 10 June, 2010

• SO we have confirmation that Labour’s popular promise to stop council homes sales had not been thought through.

New Labour housing cabinet member Julian Fulbrook is saying “we will be forgiven for taking a few weeks to look at the options” (‘We’ll take our time on council homes wreckage’, June 3).

Well, if he was completely new to the job I’d be sympathetic, but he was housing chief under the previous Labour council to 2006 – the council which left Camden with some of the worst council homes in London. He’s had four years in opposition to “look at the options” while we got on with modernising 3,000 sub-standard homes.

Councillor Fulbrook, if you got elected on the back of a promise to stop the sales (and remember we only sold 50 ex-tenanted hard-to-repair homes in four years) don’t you think you owe it to Camden voters to at least have a basic plan?

To those 20,000 council tenants still waking up every day in sub-standard homes I say beware of Cllr Fulbrook’s other easy promise “the work on Decent Homes next year won’t stop”. If the money is there why does he have to spend time thinking about options ?

My last briefing before the election was that the money we raised from selling those 50 homes runs out this year not next. Unless he comes up with an answer fast many thousands of our council tenants will be condemned to years more in deteriorating sub-standard housing, a gross inhumanity in 21st-century Britain, seriously affecting health, education, and employment chances.

Labour has had years to look at the options on housing

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