George Clarkes Council House Scandal

[HelenaDove]

31 July on Channel 4

tvhighlights.bradfordzone.co.uk/television/tvprogrammes/george-clarkes-council-house-scandal-channel-4-31-july-900pm/

As council housing in the UK reaches its 100th anniversary, George Clarke embarks on his own personal campaign to kick start a new wave of council house building. A child of a council estate, Clarke looks at the reasons for the steep decline in affordable public housing, and meets those who have suffered due to the acute shortage of homes. In a bid to realise his own ambition to create social housing of quantity, and quality, he meets visionary architects of the past, and visits the best and worst examples of housing currently on offer. A trip to Vienna, where social housing can come with indoor and outdoor pools, proves inspirational for his housing vision for the future. George lobbies government to reform housing policy, before taking matters into his own hands in a bid to start a housing revolution. Prod Co: Amazing Productions

on next Wednesday

I watched this programme too. Following the thread with interest. Grew up in a council scheme in Glasgow.

I have just finished watching this.

My opinion is that there isn't one reason why there is a shortage.

Councils aren't building, right to buy, overpopulation, no money, these are a few reasons.

I live in Scotland where right to buy has been scrapped. Houses are being built but by private companies who have to set aside a percentage of the houses to council/HA houses. On house swap sites everyone is looking for a bigger house. Most people on them want a 4 bed or bigger.

Reboot that is an issue I see constantly. Someone up thread said about building houses that people want to downsize to; but IME very very few people want a smaller place. A single pensioner will still want to keep their 3 bed in case grandchildren visit. The ones who do want to don't want an apartment as they don't want to lose the garden, but very few bungalows are built now.

I think that the option of using private companies to build new homes with the provision that a percentage are social housing has never worked. Even when Ken Livingstone was Mayor in London he was constantly allowing companies to come up with some deal as to why their scheme shouldn't include social housing ie basically bribing the decision makes with the promise to invest money elsewhere. And where it has been done you finish up with segregated housing with social tenants only allowed to use the back door and their children not allowed access to gardens and play areas.

And the fact that many house buyers dont say to the builders I dont want to live in a them and us scheme, means that there is no pressure of housebuilders not to play this game of divide and rule.

I had forgotten that in fact Theresa May lifted the cap of how much money councils could borrow to build news homes, but there is such a huge catch up to do it is unrealistic to expect councils to take on that level of debt. Shelter response: blog.shelter.org.uk/2018/10/cap-is-scrapped/

It is up to central government, and that means us as voters telling them this, to re-imburse coucils the full amount from the sale of council houses.

They also need to bring in an empty home tax, or even the right to reposses homes that are not lived in and are just an investment.

Stop sale of homes to overseas buyers. Stop sale of houses as second homes where there is a waiting list for social housing.

All of this could be done if voters made governments think this would be a vote winner. But I am afraid this country has so swallowed the lie of the need to be a home owner that it will never happen.

It isn't just governments who are the problem. It is the attitude, perpetuated through the media, that this is what we should all fixate on.

And programmes on tv like the ones George Clarke usually makes that feeds the fetishisation of home ownership and interior decorating.

And as HelenaDove has shown by quoting from a long list of articles about this which haven't bought about any change, we are going to need something much more serious / drastic to get the Great British public to change its mind.

"They also need to bring in an empty home tax, or even the right to reposses homes that are not lived in and are just an investment." Absolutely! It's obscene there are so many perfectly good homes laying empty when we have such a crisis!

And YES we need a major attitude change from govt, property developers and landlords and the public (especially homeowners I would say).

I don't understand people being ok with people being homeless, with families in shitty, mouldy, dangerous, pest ridden accommodation (I REFUSE to call these homes!!)

@HelenaDove. I wish people wouldn't just say 'There is no such thing as society'. It's taken out of context time after time.

She went on to say: “There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then to look after our neighbour.“ Her meaning, clear at the time but subsequently distorted beyond recognition, was that society was not an abstraction, separate from the men and women who composed it, but a living structure of individuals, families, neighbours and voluntary associations.

That's surely how most reasonable people think? First we take responsibility for ourselves, then our families. Rights and entitlement must at least be attempted to be balanced by responsibility. IMO.

Can you please explain what you mean by rights and entitlement in the context of what this thread is about @Gran22

@stumbledin Yes the media are culpable too IMO I even had a slight distrust of this programme before it went out After all this was on the same channel that broadcast Benefit Street.

www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wj7975/i-tried-to-interview-michael-portillo-about-austerity-and-it-didnt-go-to-plan

Just a paragraph from this article.

*Of course, I'm sure all of this will be in his Channel 5 documentary, so instead I ask him a little about his own history when it comes to housing – like that time, back in 2010, when he said the government needed to "sweep away the perverse incentives which lead people in social housing to feel it is advantageous not to work".

"We investigate that, and some people do think that the welfare state and the provision of housing lures people into dependency," replies Portillo. "It's important to try and counteract that. In some of the estates there are generations of people who have been without work, so the environment and the example passed down generations is the normality of being without work."

"I don't think it's because they live in social housing," Portillo continues. "I think it's because people whose families have not been in contact with the labour market for long periods and get into big difficulties, those people are picked up by social and council housing, and they can be quite difficult people to live with."

Forgetting the suggestion that unemployed people can be "difficult to live with", Portillo’s assertions seem to not be based in fact. Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found there's no such thing as a "culture of worklessness" passed down from generation to generation*

Article was written to accompany "Our Housing Crisis Whos To Blame" A documentary fronted by Portillo on Channel 5 last year.

stumbled on that's not the case where I live. These companies do not get planning permission if they do not build some social housing. There also isn't a them and us culture. Walking down these estates you could not tell the difference between what is a bought house and what is a social housing house. Maybe this is down to individual councils and what they will and won't allow.

How council housing"s century long proud history shames our modern times

www.mirror.co.uk/news/how-council-housings-century-long-18819551

We need proper community housing. Like Somerford Grove which had different dwellings built for everyone at all different stages of their lives.

This problem goes further back than 1980
The 1953 White Paper stipulated the continuing of promotion by all possible means the building of houses for owner occupation.

In 1954 private housebuilders were freed from the obligation to secure building licences one of the main ways by which local authority housing had been prioritised in the immediate post war years.

The big change came with the 1954 Housing Act which required that future council efforts be concentrated on redevelopment RATHER THAN general needs.

Where we are now is the result of decades of changes going further back than 1980.

Found these interesting posts from an old thread. Posted by someone who said the same thing ive been saying for years. But her DH works/worked on HA homes.

LEMisafucker Thu 12-Dec-13 10:23:27

It is not ridiculous - my father worked all his life, my mother still lives in the 3 bed council house that they would have paid for ten times over in rent. It is not about moving pensioners out of their homes its about the money being paid in by people renting these properties being put back into the system and invested properly. Its about efficient repairs and moneies not being squandered going through middle man after middle man before the guy turns up on the doorstep to fix the boiler. My DP has worked on social housing contracts, subcontracting for a subcontractor whos is subcontracting for the main contractor who is farming all of this work out with god knows how many back hander with every little cog in the wheel syphoning off their money so where a job that DP would charge £150 for a days work (hes a carpenter) to a private homeowner, the same job is probably costing the council (the tax payer) £400 while everyone else creams their bit of money on top. He was astounded at the lack of organisation, waste of time, three people sent to do a job that could be done by one person etc. THAT is where the failings are, well, one of them, not allowing people who have paid into the system over the years to keep the homes they have paid for. Many pensioners CHOOSE to downsize, but even then suitable places are not available - you cannot put a pensioner for instance in a 1 bed flat on the fourth floor

same poster

There wouldn't be that problem of the maintainance costs if it wasn't such a lucrative business, contractors fall over themselves for SH contracts provide substantial "perks" its money for old rope. They pay underqualified workers a pittance of pay to get the work done quickly to a pretty poor standard and charge more than a premium job. So that argument for selling off the council properties falls a bit flat - there are people out there making substantial profits out of people falling on hard times

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/residents-near-tottenhams-new-stadium-18864998

Residents near Tottenham's new stadium fear they're being 'pushed out of area'

Plush new £1billion stadium couldn't be further away from Love Lane estate as tensions between club and locals grow.

Outside, you are standing on streets that are among the 5% most deprived in Britain.

The stadium redevelopment was an opportunity to lift the prospects of the people who live here.

But, instead, as the regeneration surrounding the stadium continues with a development known as High Road West, many families now fear they will simply be swept away.

A new walkway proposed to bring fans from a new station entrance at White Hart Lane station brings its own statistics. 297 social housing homes threatened with demolition in a borough with a severe housing shortage

Where 10,000 households are on the council’s waiting list and 3,000 families are stuck in temporary accommodation.

Meanwhile, 30 small manufacturing businesses on the Peacock estate, providing hundreds of decent local jobs, are facing eviction via a ­compulsory purchase order.

The proposals will also mean the loss of a library.

speyejoe2.wordpress.com/2019/08/09/affordable-social-at-497-83-pw-for-a-3-bed-25976-pa-rent-is-it-unlawful/

www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/17827927.residents-charged-thousands-lift-no-access/?ref=twtrec

Finished the John Boughton book An excellent read and some of the shit that has gone on WOW.

wwwbrokenbarnet.blogspot.com/2016/01/the-last-betrayal-or-breaking-of-west.html

The West Hendon Estate.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/01/how-council-promises-have-fallen-away-leaving-west-hendon-estate-dire-straits

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/13/samuel-garside-residents-move-back-despite-fire-safety-fears?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Barking fire: social tenants told to return despite safety fears

Residents of east London flats say they are being forced back before safety assessments

Social housing residents of a block of flats in east London that was recently engulfed in flames say they are being forced to move back despite safety fears.

All residents at Samuel Garside House in Barking were evacuated after a fire on 9 June. About 100 firefighters and 15 fire engines were dispatched to deal with the blaze. The majority of residents were put in hotel accommodation, while others were rehomed in temporary accommodation.

The landlord for social tenants, Southern Housing Group, has now informed residents that they will no longer receive financial support to stay in alternative accommodation and must return to their flats.

Leaseholders will continue to receive financial support for alternative accommodation until September.

Social housing residents said they were being forced to move back in before safety assessments were carried out by the building control department of the borough of Barking and Dagenham. These assessments are due to start on 21 August and be completed on 29 August.

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined but experts had previously warned that the building’s wooden balconies could “accelerate fire spread”.

While some of the cladding has been removed, residents have been told it will take several months for it all to be removed. Though a report in June recommended that the existing wooden cladding on the building be sprayed with fire retardant in the interim, this has yet to happen.
Guardian Today: the headlines, the analysis, the debate - sent direct to you
Read more

Twenty flats were destroyed by the flames and a further 10 were damaged by heat and smoke. The worst-affected flats were in blocks C and D, which are largely owned by leaseholders or privately rented. Social housing tenants largely reside in blocks A and B, which were not badly affected.

Peter Mason, the chair of the Barking Reach residents’ association, described the decision to force social housing residents to move back as “disgraceful”. He said: “We will be contacting Southern Housing urgently to protest.

“Although they’ve partially removed some decorative portion of the cladding, the vast majority of it remains. If a balcony caught fire, it would spread rapidly from flat to flat. I don’t think they have removed the danger.

Shaun Murphy, a senior solicitor at Edwards Duthie Shamash, is representing several residents at Samuel Garside House. He said: “We are very concerned about the decision of Southern Housing Group to withdraw financial support for the residents. All this has happened prior to the completion of safety reports due at the end of the month, to be undertaken by the London borough of Barking and Dagenham.”

He added: “There is also the outstanding issue of the recommendation of existing cladding still not having been sprayed with adequate fire retardant. All of this has been ignored by Southern Housing Group in forcing residents to go back into Samuel Garside House now.”

The local MP, Margaret Hodge, said: “It is not right that social housing tenants of Samuel Garside House are forced to return to the block whilst private tenants and leaseholders have until September. These families and individuals deserve equal treatment

“I urge Southern Housing to reconsider. Their tenants must be allowed to stay in their temporary accommodation until further repair works and the next fire safety assessments are completed.

A spokesperson for Barking and Dagenham council said: “Residents are understandably concerned about returning home and, despite our limited powers to intervene as this is not a council block, they have asked if we can assess the block’s safety. We have appointed an independent HHSRS [housing health and safety rating system] assessor to determine whether there are any category 1 or 2 hazards and this assessment is due to start on 21 August.”

Chris Harris, the customer services director of Southern Housing Group, said: “Our priority is always the safety and wellbeing of our residents. From the moment the fire was reported, Southern Housing Group has worked with London borough of Barking and Dagenham(LBBD), the London fire service and other stakeholders to ensure that the people affected could return to their homes and normality as soon as possible. None of the properties occupied by Southern Housing Group’s residents were directly damaged by the fire and so they are not being inspected by LBBD. Indeed, the properties were deemed safe for the return of residents by LFS’s fire safety engineer shortly after the fire was extinguished and residents started to return from the afternoon of Tuesday 11 June.”

Harris added: “At no time has there been any suggestion from the London fire service, the council or independent fire safety inspectors that it is unsafe to for Southern Housing Residents to return home.

Case study

Jacqueline, 52, a social housing tenant at Samuel Garside House, said she has not been able to sleep in her room since moving back into her flat. She sleeps in the living room with the lights on instead. She fears the block is not safe to live in, but said her social housing provider has left her with no other option.

“If anything happens, I need to know I can get out quickly because I don’t trust their system to wake me up on time,” she explained. “I live on my own, which makes it even worse.”

Southern Housing, the social housing provider, told Jacqueline that as of Monday 12 August, she would no longer be receiving financial support to stay in alternative accommodation and she could return to her flat.

“My first thought was: is the property safe? What are we moving back into? I don’t feel safe or comfortable at all but I don’t have any choices,” she said.

Jacqueline had lived in her flat for five years and said she became emotional when she thought about the fire tearing through the building while she was sitting in her flat. While there was no physical damage to her flat, she worried that the wooden cladding, which experts have previously warned could accelerate a fire, had not been sprayed with fire retardant and could take months to remove.

“I know people suffered more than me, but no one gets where we are coming from because they just want people in the flats,” Jacqueline said. “I know it’s not on the scale of Grenfell, but it’s only for the grace of God that no one died that day.”

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/14/londoners-win-battle-to-stop-their-homes-being-demolished-for-private-flats?CMP=share_btn_tw

Londoners win battle with council to save homes from demolition

U-turn by Tower Hamlets lauded a victory against social cleansing in the capital

A determined coalition of residents in east London, including a 94-year-old woman who is one of the original residents, has won its battle to stop the council demolishing their homes.

Residents of the two blocks in Whitechapel, which stand on prime real estate land, lauded the U-turn by the local mayor, John Biggs, at a meeting on Tuesday night as a victory against social cleansing in the capital.

Tower Hamlets council had wanted to demolish the two blocks, Treves House and Lister House, which contain 51 flats, for several years. Residents were dismayed when Biggs admitted at a public meeting two years ago that the building of private flats on the land was under consideration, and that discussions had been going on for a year behind closed doors.
'It’s social cleansing': the 93-year-old fighting east London demolitions
Read more

Residents planned their fightback to save the blocks from the Treves House living room of Sophie Spielman, who turns 95 in a couple of weeks, and joked that her home was the campaign’s HQ.

Spielman originally came to the UK from India and is not only the oldest resident but also the one who has lived there the longest. Her late husband, Nat, who opposed Oswald Mosley’s fascists during the Battle of Cable Street, was the first to move in, in 1959. She joined him a couple of years later.

Spielman sat in the front row of Tuesday’s meeting, listening intently to the council officials’ every word . She smiled when Biggs confirmed the blocks would not be demolished.

“I’ve been happy here for 57 years. I can’t imagine life anywhere else,” she said. “All I want to do is live here for the rest of my days and now I’ll be able to do that.

Neighbours from a wide range of backgrounds have been involved in the battle to save the blocks of flats, including Kay Ballard, who says she can trace her cockney roots back seven generations, and the British-Bangladeshi resident Khayrun Begum.

The high-spec, brick flats were built in the 1950s in the new brutalist style designed by Count Ralph Smorczewski for Stillman and Eastwick, one of the foremost architecture partnerships of the postwar reconstruction years.

At the 2017 meeting which sparked residents’ concerns, Biggs said: “You would have to do a deal in which you would build a large number of properties. You would build 100 or something and sell off a large chunk.”

He said building some flats for sale on the open market would generate enough income to also provide some social housing on the site.

The justification for the demolition plans was derived from an expert report which said a lot of costly structural work would be required to make the blocks habitable, costing in the region of £6.2m, so destroying the blocks and rebuilding of the prime site was the preferred option.

It came at a time of dwindling supply of council housing in the capital and an ever-lengthening housing waiting list. Similar battles over the destruction of council housing are being fought in many other London boroughs

At the meeting two years ago, Biggs agreed to set up a working group. A new expert report was commissioned and completed in June this year. It found just £1.8m of works were required to refurbish the blocks, rather than the £6.2m originally cited. “It is agreed the building is generally structurally sound,” the new report stated, with the main requirements being new roofs and windows.
Eight decades after the Battle of Cable Street, east London is still united
Angus Ritchie
Read more

After announcing demolition was off the table, Biggs said: “I do appreciate it’s been pretty stressful for all of you.”

“The plans to demolish the blocks were social cleansing,” said resident Syed Ali. “Had they gone ahead we would not have been able to afford to live in our own neighbourhood. I’m so relieved about this decision. It’s not just the anxiety about where we would go if the flats were demolished but the sentimental value too. I was brought up in that flat and all my memories are tied up with it.

www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qkq4bx/every-flat-in-a-new-south-london-development-has-been-sold-to-foreign-investors

35percent.org/

35percent.org/heygate-regeneration-faq/

Ooh social housing with pools, how lovely, thought doubtful that the UK will get it.

I’m Edinburgh then it’s only been in the last few years that all social housing now comes with a shower and a bath, unless of course your bathroom was too small in the first place for a bath and you only got a shower.

Though council houses are behind the housing associations where showers and baths are concerned.

I was surprised that George was brought up in a council home but I don’t know why