Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280
- 299)
TUESDAY 18 JANUARY 2005
MR VIC
SMITH, MS
HELEN MARSON,
MS CAROLYN
PALMER-FAGAN
AND MS
REVINDER JOHAL
Q280 Mr Hopkins: I am trying not
to ask you political questions, but the whole thing is so political
it is a bit difficult to get away from it. Everything you say
to me and everything that has happened suggests that there is
a political drive from central government to get public assets
into the semi-private or eventually the private sector, either
by transferring to social landlords that are not local authority
and not essentially in the public sector, or—and we are
coming up to that now—selling off those houses and getting
them into private ownership. It is a continuation of a political
approach that has been with us for the last thirty years or so—a
drive to privatise.
Ms Marson: All of the other options
offer tenants the opportunity to access other funding. The option
that does not currently is the retention by the Council.
Q281 Mr Hopkins: In my own local
authority area the housing associations' rents are higher, the
management is poorer, and it is more difficult to get repairs
done. However, it does not get the same public attention as a
democratically accountable local authority. Is that pattern similar
in Birmingham, where you have housing associations?
Ms Marson: I do not think I could
answer that. I am not aware that any of our associations are considered
to be really poor providers.
Ms Palmer-Fagan: I work with a
number of different providers out on the district because it is
a housing market renewal area, and a lot of other social housing
providers are housing associations or registered social landlords.
From experience, I do not have the impression that they are poor
providers. You are right that the rent is higher but you get what
you pay for in the sense that if they have improved stock, heating,
windows, and they have met "decent homes", that cost
has to be paid for somewhere along the line, so I would assume
that is taken into account with the rents. I am not aware that
any of the associations I work with are poor performers. Some
of them are quite good and very, very good performers.
Q282 Mr Hopkins: So you keep the
rents lower in the local authority, so you cannot afford to do
the—
Ms Palmer-Fagan: No, we do not.
Q283 Mr Hopkins: But the lower rents
mean you do not get things done so easily. It suggests that privatisation
means higher rents.
Ms Marson: The issue about rents
for the local authority is that we are obviously subject to rent
policy, and the issues around rent convergence, and subsidy levels
would be affected if we made decisions to increase levels more
than the formula rate; so it would not end up being beneficial
to the authority to try and increase rents above the guidelines,
so rents are controlled in effect. There is not an opportunity
to just hike them to invest more.
Q284 Mrs Campbell: Vic, did you vote
in the ballot? Would you tell us how you voted and why? Did you
vote against stock transfer?
Mr Smith: Yes.
Q285 Mrs Campbell: Why did you do
that?
Mr Smith: Because the tenants
made it quite plain they did not want to leave the City Council,
because if they had gone for stock transfer it would have meant
a complete transfer out of the City Council.
Q286 Mrs Campbell: But you would
have had a rather higher standard of homes.
Mr Smith: They did not care. The
Council said, "you will get this; you will get that; you
will get new bathrooms and new roofs" and they still voted
against it. They made it quite plain to everyone, even the press
and even the Government, that they did not want to move. They
will not leave the Council; the Council is their umbrella and
they will not leave it. If these options come up now, and say
one of them was "you have to leave the Council", they
would just tell them, "there is the door". I am not
joking about it.
Q287 Mrs Campbell: No, but that was
why you voted, was it?
Mr Smith: No, that is why they
voted.
Q288 Mrs Campbell: Why did you vote
against it?
Mr Smith: Because I represent
the tenants, and what they tell me to do I do.
Q289 Mrs Campbell: So you were not
voting for yourself; you were voting as a representative.
Mr Smith: Yes. I was their representative.
I belong to the City umbrella. What do they call them? Stock transfer.
I belong to the main panel in the City. If I had a question or
a question was put to me, I did not answer that question; I went
back to the tenant and asked them what they thought about it.
Q290 Mrs Campbell: If the tenants
had said to you that they wanted you to vote for stock transfer,
you would have done it.
Mr Smith: If they had said "for",
I would have said "for" because it is not my choice.
If I was talking for myself I would make my own choice, but it
is not my choice; it is their choice; it is the people out there
that count.
Q291 Mrs Campbell: But you did have
a personal vote as well, did you not?
Mr Smith: Yes.
Q292 Mrs Campbell: Everybody else
had a vote and you had a personal vote, and you are saying that
you did not want to leave the Council.
Mr Smith: No, I did not want to
leave the Council.
Ms Marson: That is the issue.
For tenants it is not just the prospect of what the improvements
might be—kitchen, bathroom refurbishment, re-roofing and
central-heating. That is not the sole basis on which they will
make a decision. Many tenants have been with the City Council
as their landlord for 30, 40 or 50 years. There is an element
of trust there, and of course they have issues over time about
service, but there is underneath that a level of trust of the
City Council as a service provider that they maybe do not have,
especially some of the more elderly tenants, when perhaps in their
youth private sector landlords had such a reputation. To them,
those things all matter, and it is not just on the improvements
that they will make a decision.
Q293 Mrs Campbell: You have used
the word "trust". Would you use the word "security"
as well?
Ms Marson: Yes.
Ms Palmer-Fagan: That is what
I was about to say. For a lot of people—and I have had an
opportunity over the years I have worked here to meet a lot of
tenant residents throughout the city—it is about security
and safety. Helen is quite right that for a lot of the remaining
tenants it has a lot to do with affluence, stability, and so forth.
Many of them have been tenants for a long time. People who have
the ability to go out there and buy their homes or rent privately
and so forth do, but what we have in the main remaining are the
tenants that need that safety net and the security or umbrella,
as Vic defined, at the Council. It is not only about bricks and
mortar for them; it is about the other added issues and added
value that goes with being a council tenant.
Q294 Mrs Campbell: What proportion
of the electorate voted in the ballot?
Ms Marson: The turnout was about
75%.
Q295 Mrs Campbell: And the percentage
for and against?
Ms Marson: It was two to one against,
so two-thirds against.
Q296 Mr Prentice: The report that
the independent commission published in December 2002 talked about
80,000 council houses; and you told us a few moments ago that
there are now 72,500 in the two years. What happened to all these
other houses?
Ms Marson: It is the rate of stock
loss through two issues, the right to buy and our own clearance
and redevelopment programme.
Q297 Mr Prentice: That is a huge
reduction in two years, is it not?
Ms Marson: I was actually reading
a report written in 2000 myself last night, and the stock then
was 88,000, and that was only four years ago.
Q298 Mr Prentice: Carolyn, you told
us that in your area you are part of a housing market renewal
area. Have there been many demolitions?
Ms Palmer-Fagan: Yes, there have.
We have issues around defective properties, which are houses that
are quite a loss to us because obviously the aspirations of many
of our tenants is houses for their homes, and also undesirable
stock like high-rise. We have just demolished recently an 18-storey
block within an estate that was unpopular, and it would have cost
us a significant amount to re-invest. When we are in Hodge Hill
particularly there is quite a lot of clearance in the five-year
programme, and also a lot of land awaiting redevelopment of various
different sorts.
Q299 Mr Prentice: So you are going
to lose a lot of properties over the next two or three years.
Ms Palmer-Fagan: Yes. Also, when
tenants are approached about making a choice on whether to have
retention or to move elsewhere, for some reason it just generates
people going out and purchasing their homes. It is something around
when you go out there and consult around their home, people think,
"if I have got the opportunity, let me grab it and secure
it for myself" because of the vulnerability of where they
will ultimately end up.
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