HOMES ARE SAVED - MP Frank Dobson and council leader Nash Ali celebrate after halting sale of Council homes to private buyers

Published: 13 May, 2010
by RICHARD OSLEY

LABOUR councillors have halted the sale of council homes to private buyers at auction after winning the Town Hall elections on Thursday.
Less than a week after taking charge, the new leadership at Camden Council has scrapped the deeply divisive policy of raising money through the sales of houses and flats.
While Labour lost power nationally, it triumphed locally by returning both Camden MPs in Glenda Jackson and Frank Dobson and installing a majority team of 30 councillors on the council.

In its first meeting with Town Hall chief executive Moira Gibb this week, Labour immediately blocked the prospect of further auctions – a victory for tenants and trade union members who have campaigned for two years against the sell-offs.
The ban on sales will instantly interrupt a plan devised by the Lib Dem and Conservative coalition that has run Camden for the past four years to sell off 500 homes.

The policy was dogged by controversy as developers cashed in at a series of auctions by buying the homes – meant for the Camden’s homeless – for a relatively cheap price and then quickly “flipping” the properties, the process of selling them on for a speedy profit.
After being beaten at the polls, members of the coalition were told yesterday (Wednesday) that the policy was the “worst thing” they had done ­during their brief spell running Camden.

Labour leader Councillor Nash Ali said: “It is a complete halt – straight away. No more council homes will be sold off under Labour. We have spoken to Moira Gibb and that has been put into action.”
Housing was one of Labour’s weakest policies at the last round of borough-wide elections in 2006 and tenants appeared to withdraw their traditional support for the party as it crashed to its first defeat in ­Camden for more than three decades.

But the pledge to stop the sell-offs was a key plank of Labour’s local manifesto this time around and the swift action is designed to reassure voters who have swung back behind the party that they will make good on their promises.
Other policies in the manifesto include freezing chief officer pay at the Town Hall, restoring computer centres for ­people who can’t get online at home, and providing better funding for advice centres.
The action on council home sales, however, was the first target on the hit-list for the new Labour council. Mr Dobson, who increased his majority at the general election in Holborn and St Pancras, said: “What this means is that when council homes become vacant – people will actually be able to live in them. They won’t be sold off for somebody to make money on them.”

Labour members are bemused that their rivals repeatedly ignored loud protests about the sales. A New Journal survey last year found a host of tenants’ leaders incandescent about the fact council housing was being lost to the private market in the middle of Camden’s worst-ever shortage.
Mr Dobson said the Town Hall ignored promises of new investment from John Healey, the outgoing housing min­ister nationally.

He said: “What we need is money in council housing – and more homes being built. If this new Conservative and Lib Dem government stick to the new finance arrangements that John Healey announced, there will be money there. But it’s an if. Those two ­parties have contrasting policies on affordable housing.”

Mandy Berger, a Unison convenor in Camden, said: “The selling off of council homes was the worst thing the Lib Dems and Tories did. These were vital homes and I am absolutely delighted that the Labour Party has moved so quickly to stop this.”
She said that the union would be seeking meetings with the new Labour leadership within the coming days to discuss other issues including an ongoing row about the privatisation of the caretaker service on estates.
The coalition parties, which will now form separate opposition groups at the Town Hall, maintained they had to sell council homes in order to fund overdue repair work on estates.

Both argued they had been backed into a corner by a Labour government that refused to invest in council homes. Camden Council was singled out for a funding freeze five years ago after tenants rebelled against government policy of privatising estates.
The money raised by the sales helped kickstart a refurbishment project that has seen thousands of new kitchens and bathrooms installed.
Cllr Ali said: “What we are saying is that the work will go on, but we will be looking at the figures on how much is being spent on it. There is an indication that this shouldn’t cost as much as has been worked out before. We will be looking at where savings can be made.

“Also some tenants are happy with their homes and don’t even want this work. Where we need to, we will be looking at ­other areas for where we can provide the money.”
Lib Dem leader Keith Moffitt, who headed the council during the four years of the coalition, said:  “It feels like we are now going to have go back to being a council with a begging bowl, asking the government for money.
“That has had no success in the past and in the current climate it is difficult to see the government suddenly providing millions and millions of pounds. Labour says there are other ways of providing  the income, but we’d like to see where.”