Defend Council Housing |
|
Northanpton TUC has worked with the Defend Council Housing campaign to support their effort to retain affordable public housing and to make sure that control of that housing rests with the local community and the council.Copy of letter sent to local press. Dear Editor The Trades Union Council has affiliated unions, many of whose members rely on decent affordable council housing because of the private markets inability to cater for all. We have supported the Defend Council Housing Campaign from the time it began campaigning locally after the threat of privatisation of council housing was raised in this town. The national campaign has growing support and increasingly authorities around the country and their tenants are resisting the threat to publicly owned council housing. But alongside this rejection of sell offs the Campaign also calls for a fair system of funding for council housing. At present councils keep only 1/4 of their Right to Buy Receipts so that in the case of Northampton for instance, which has been selling approximately 500 houses a year to sitting tenants under the Right to Buy Scheme, the council retains only £5 million out of a revenue of £20 million from these sales. The Government takes £15 million that we say should be ploughed back into repairs or new homes, but to make matters worse our local council does not even spend that small part it retains on housing but spends it elsewhere. To argue then that only through sell offs can extra money be found is to miss the blindingly obvious, especially when the extra money talked about is in the form of subsidies given to private housing companies as an inducement for privatisation but not to local councils . Tenants are to be congratulated as is the Defend Council Housing Campaign for seeing off this massively funded campaign for the privatisation of council housing. Yours Dave Green - Northampton Trades Union Council Publicity Secretary 35 Southfield Road
|