As I discussed yesterday these are Interesting times in Reading, with increasing amounts of political cross-dressing going on locally.
We read in today's Post that Labour politicians have been lobbying the Housing Minister, Margaret Beckett, to help increase the availability of affordable housing in Reading and in doing so publicly backing TWO LIb Dem campaigns.
From the article:
"Cllr Ennis took the opportunity to bend the minister’s ear on the need for more homes in Reading.
He said at the time: “I welcomed the opportunity to meet the Minister of Housing Margaret Beckett to make her aware of the numbers of people on the council housing waiting list.
“We lobbied for assistance to either build new council homes to alleviate this need or to be able to take over empty private homes and house families that are being made homeless through repossession of their homes.”
He also raised the issue of the cash Reading has to pay back to the Government from its council house rents.
He said: “Margaret Beckett is committed to looking at this problem of negative subsidy in the forthcoming review into council house funding.”
Regular readers of this blog will know that I have led the Lib Dem campaign to get Reading Borough Council to bring empty homes back into use.
The Labour-run Council dragged its heels but finally agreed to adopt a policy after sustained pressure from the Lib Dems (funnily enough not the Tories) back in February.
However, we are continuing to press Labour for action as so far not ONE single house has been brought back into use.
With the recession starting to bite, and the number of houses being repossessed in Reading rising sharply the need for the Council to work with RSLs to make long-term empty homes available for families made homeless is now very urgent.
I have requested a full update on the empty homes situation at the next meeting of the Housing, Health & Community Care Scrutiny Panel in March 2009.
It's also ironic that Labour politicians are now claiming support for our campaign to get the government to drop the scandalous so-called negative equity, better known as a "tenant tax". This policy sees part of the rent paid by all council tenants clawed back by the Treasury out of the Council's coffers.
Cllr Gareth Epps has led the Lib Dem campaign against this unfair tax in Reading.
Inexplicably and In contradiction to the apparent endorsement for our campaign by Labour politicians in the article in today's Post, when Gareth asked the Labour Leader of the Council to support the Lib Dem campaign at last week's Cabinet meeting - she point-blank refused.
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