Taking part in a four hour long full Council meeting with a bad head cold is not up there with my favourite things to do, but it was pleasing to discover consensus on several housing issues on which the Lib Dems in Reading have been actively campaigning.
One of these was the Lib Dem campaign to end the dreaded "tenant tax"(negative subsidy is it's formal name) whereby millions of pounds worth of council tenants' rent is siphoned back to Whitehall.
I blogged last week that Labour had performed a u-turn on this issue and are now backing our campaign for national reform to get tenants' money back.
As Cllr Gareth Epps pointed out last week the figure tenants are likely to lose this year is around £5.5 million pounds: money that could and should be spent on improving council properties in Reading.
We pledged support for the Council's average rent increase of 4.9% on condition that all politicial parties in Reading lobby the government to reform this unfair system which robs tenants.
To my surprise, the Conservatives' housing spokesperson, Cllr Terry Byrne, who has hitherto been silent on this issue, piped up last night to support a Labour motion tabled at last night's meeting calling for council participation in the national review of council housing finance and an end to negative subsidy.
Cross-party support for our campaign is very welcome and we hope it will lead to a more just system for Reading's Council tenants in the longer term.
Cllr Ennis has been vocal in his support for Lib Dem housing campaigns in the past, including our empty homes campaign in recent years. The question is will new Lead Councillor for Housing, Cllr Debbie Edwards share his passion?
Labour's motion was based on the national campaign mounted by the campaign group Defend Council Housing and co-ordinated by the Commons Council Council Housing Group.
The motion also included reference to Early Day Motion 355 on Council House Building which calls for councils to be given the money to build 'a new generation of first-class council housing'.
Since the 1980s an estimated 1.7 million council houses have been sold off via 'Right to Buy' introduced by a Conservative government and which continued under Labour since 1997.
At the same time the number of Council homes built since 1997 has been minuscule in comparison to the heady days of the post-war period (with 354,000 built in 1954 alone).
This is one of the reasons Britain is in the midst of a housing crisis; as the Local Government Association pointed out last week, one in twelve people is currently on a waiting list for social housing in the UK: that's 1.8 million households or 4.8 million people.
We are in the middle of a recession and this number is sadly like to increase locally. I have requested an update report on the impact of the credit crunch on housing in Reading to ensure that the Council is doing all it can to support families and individuals at this time.
Nationally, In response to the ongoing crisis, Liberal Democrat Conference passed a motion last year to increase the amount of available council housing. Key sections of the policy are as follows:
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Invest all the proceeds from council house sales in building more social homes
- End the system of ‘negative subsidy’ where council tenants subsidise maintenance costs in other parts of the country
- Support Government-backed equity mortgages to help first time buyers get on the housing ladder
- Pilot Community Land Auctions to ensure that local people get the benefits of new development through improved infrastructure
Read the complete policy motion here.
It appears that nationally, Labour has had a change of heart about council house building, encouraging councils to build once more. The cynic in me wonders if this policy change is partly a response to concerns highlighted recently by Dr Vince Cable, about the financial vulnerability of many housing associations in the economic downturn.
In another important victory for Reading's Council tenants, my campaign for decent neighbourhoods not just decent homes was echoed last night by both the Conservatives and Labour during a debate on the Council's Housing Revenue Account Financial Plan for 2009/10, with both Parties endorsing my call to improve the 'look and feel' of estates in Reading.
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