Wanted: a housing set-up fit for the lean times ahead

• WOULD Jessie White and Richard Schunemann have us believe the expenditure of millions of borrowed money on Islington’s council housing has had no impact on the demand for repairs (Remember the long waits to get a home repair done, July 15)?

Any recent improvements to the policies and procedures by which our housing is managed are irrelevant to the consideration of how to manage our housing in future because Homes for Islington (HfI) staff would simply go back to Islington Council under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) law, bringing their procedures with them.

Only council housing can be answerable to its tenants and the wider community. Now that HfI has passed its use-by date we should concentrate on how to ensure the new regime reaches its full potential in this regard.

Mr Schunemann complains that councillors are only answerable to their electorate every four years. Devotees of HfI are normally quick to point out that some of its board members are directly elected by tenants. However, councillors represent their electorate whereas board members are merely “representative of residents” but bound by their code of conduct and company law to represent the corporate interests of HfI, of which their landlord is sole shareholder.

Difficult decisions are not made without rigorous debate. The essential components are, first, leaders with vision; second, a pro-active opposition; third, competent officers to inform; and last, means for tenants, decision-makers and the wider community to openly scrutinise all and everything.

There needs to be full transparency and everyone involved, including tenants, needs to be kept accountable.

Any fool can keep secure tenants quiet when housing management decisions revolve around generous spending targets, although they may upset leasehold tenants whose bills are required to match them. What is needed is a management structure fit for the lean times ahead.

CHRIS GRAHAM 
Tollington Park, N4

• JESSIE White, HfI director, pitifully cries “scaremongering”, alleging suggestions that Islington’s housing stock will be transferred to a housing association. Informed tenant activists will already know the council has ruled this out and it’s therefore not an assertion of the Disband HfI petition. It’s a red herring Mrs White seems to hope will distract from the real financial implications of Islington retaining HfI.

Fact: From next year Islington must be self-financing (losing its current rent subsidy) as well as taking on locally debt which currently sits on the government balance sheet, to the tune of £400million. This must be financed and eventually funded, if not by sell-offs to housing associations (as has been ruled out) then from Islington tenants’ rents and service charges.

Fact: £400million is almost three times what Islington received in Decent Homes funding that’s been squandered by HfI due to its dreadful procurement and contract compliance monitoring.

Fact: Already, after only six years of HfI’s procurement and “stewardship” of contracts, we have been condemned to lining corporate pockets with our money for decades to come.

HfI was handed a half billion pound, once-in-a-lifetime cash injection and, of course, this frog-marched in some short-term betterment, but the fundamental long-term outlook remains unchanged. While I sympathise with the repeated lack of faith in councillors and the current system of local democracy expressed by Richard Schunemann , I’m not yet inclined to abandon Islington’s right to democracy and council housing. Restore democratic accountability and say no to public waste – disband HfI.

THOMAS COOPER
www.DisbandHFI.org.uk

• IT is surprising that Lib Dem councillors would like to have a referendum about the future of HfI. In 2003, a referendum was held by the then Lib Dem council, resulting in 83 per cent of tenants and leaseholders voting for an arms’-length organisation to manage the housing stock but there was only a 24 per cent response or turnout.  

Therefore, this referendum was unable to gauge the opinion of those who did not feel empowered enough to vote. Councillor James Murray has tirelessly been consulting tenants’ and residents’ associations and tenant management associations to gather enough information to make an informed decision. A referendum is expensive and if tenants do not vote then this would suggest this system is not appropriate in these circumstances.

As a council tenant I would vote to keep an arms’-length organisation as I have always found it helpful and easy to work with. However, I know that Cllr Murray has been very thorough and I trust he will reach a decision based on the information he is gathering from tenants and residents he meets to enable this council to make an informed choice.  

GEORGE TOPPING
Chair, Whitecross estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association 

Published: 22 July, 2011