Defend Council Housing response to Hills Report

Professor John Hills yesterday published his report Ends & Means on the ‘Role of Social Housing’.

It is clear that someone – we presume Ruth Kelly’s Department for Communities – is briefing that Hills has endorsed an attack on the fundamental principles of council housing.

It is obvious that Ministers are increasingly desperate – losing the Brighton ballot (another 77% NO vote announced today) increases the pressure on them to listen to the people and agree the ‘Fourth Option’ but they are still intent on trying to find a way of getting rid of council housing. Hill’s position is less clear.

Professor Hills went out of his way at the LSE yesterday afternoon to preface his main remarks by underlining his commitment to the principles of ‘decent’, ‘affordable’ and ‘secure’ housing. He said:

“if you came with the impression that I was going to be recommending the ending of security of tenure, or that tenants if they’re lucky enough to improve their circumstances will be thrown out of their homes, then you’re going to be disappointed.”… “security and stability are a fundamental part of their lives”

Tenants packed a room at Parliament after the Hills report launch to launch the new DCH pamphlet ‘Dear Gordon’ Invest in decent, affordable, secure and accountable council housing which challenges Gordon Brown to change government policy.

MPs attending included Michael Meacher, Frank Dobson, Ken Purchase, Jon Cruddas, Paul Holmes, George Galloway, Kelvin Hopkins, Brian Iddon, Alan Simpson, Harriet Harman, Mike Gapes, John Hemming and Brian Binley. Trade union leaders Gail Cartmail (Amicus), Jack Dromey (T&G), Iain McNicol (GMB) and Wilf Flinn (UCATT) spoke alongside Professor Peter Ambrose and tenants from local campaigns.

Alan Walter, Defend Council Housing chair argued “Government has been trying to get rid of council housing by privatisation. Now that they’re losing tenants ballots around the country they’re flying a kite to see whether they can regulate or legislate to take away our secure life long tenancies. 3 million council tenants will be outraged and MPs need to decide quickly which side they are on! Stop the deliberate stigmatisation of council tenants and council estates and start investing to improve existing council homes and build new ones”

Austin Mitchell MP, chair House of Commons Council Housing group commented “The Hills report is an endorsement of the principles behind council housing – the need and the right to decent, affordable, secure and accountable housing provided by elected local authorities. What he missed out was the need for the big build – to provide council housing for those who either can’t afford or don’t want to get on the home ownership escalator.”

The Hills report does open a door – he talks about ‘offering’ people who approach the council in housing need and existing tenants ‘alternatives’. Ruth Kelly has pounced on an opportunity. In government language ‘offer’ means force or coerce so she’s trying to fly some kites to whether people (council tenants and MPs) will stomach proposals on means testing the right to a council home; differential rents and/or time limited tenancy agreements. Any attempt to restrict the ‘right to rent’ decent, affordable, secure council housing from an accountable landlord will face massive opposition. It also makes a mockery of the government’s stated aim of creating ‘sustainable communities’. Restricting access to council housing to only the poorest creates distorted and transient communities and denies council tenants the right to a ‘home’ as opposed to somewhere just to temporarily lay our heads down for the night.

Kelly said yesterday this was a start of the debate. One day is quite long enough! Nearly 3 million council tenants across the UK and the 1.6 million households on council housing waiting lists will fight any attempt to reduce our security of tenure and we’re demanding government stop robbing council housing and agree the ‘Fourth Option’ to improve existing and build new council homes.

Professor Hills identified a number of problems with council housing in this report. Contributing to the debate at the LSE Alan Walter, chair of Defend Council Housing, suggested to him that tenant dissatisfaction on repairs could be largely solved if government fully funded council expenditure on management and maintenance (M&M) and dissatisfaction on overcrowding would be solved if more council homes were built. To loud applause Alan Walter invited John Hills to join with tenants and other supporters of council housing in urging the Secretary of State to fund the ‘Fourth Option’ as her own party conference has voted three years running.

Hills kept to his script replying it wasn’t up to him to comment on whether there should be a “first, second, third or fourth option” – that was up to Ministers. The alliance of council tenants, national trade unions, councillors and MPs across parties is waiting.

DCH also met with the Cave Review team at the Department for Communities (DCLG) on Monday to give oral evidence in support of our written submissions and to clarify the aims of the Cave Review into Housing Regulation. We will be discussing how to bring tenants together from around the country to make sure our voice is clearly heard.

See http://www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk/ for background information on ‘Fourth Option’ for council housing, No votes against privatisation, press reports, Labour’s conference policy, ‘Ten Questions to Candidates’ in elections for Scottish and Welsh government, local elections and candidates for Labour Party leadership and deputy leadership elections (see back of Dear Gordon: Invest in decent, affordable, secure and accountable council housing pamphlet)

Fury over homes snub

Fury over homes snub

From the Wiltshire Times
By David VallisDEMANDS for heads to roll were made this week after council bosses suffered a humiliating defeat in their £600,000 bid to persuade tenants to transfer their homes to a housing association.

The South Wiltshire Defend Council Housing group has called for the resignations of community and housing portfolio holder John Cole-Morgan, and council leader Richard Britton, in the wake of last Thursday’s ballot result.

That showed a massive 71 per cent of Salisbury district council’s 5,400 tenants voted against the proposed transfer.The group also called for the dissolution of the council’s tenants panel, which had recommended backing for the housing stock switch.

But council chiefs remained defiant, claiming the stock transfer was actually thrust upon them by government, and they were right to hold the ballot.

Intense pressure was put on the city and district’s council tenants to opt for a switch and 4,810 (74.2 per cent) of them voted in the ballot, conducted by the Independent Electoral Reform Society.

Of those 3,424 voted in favour of staying with the council and only 1,377 (28.65 per cent) for the transfer A similar defeat was suffered by the council when it balloted tenants on a proposed transfer in 1989, and now the current Tory administration has been accused of “not listening” and wasting taxpayers money.

Labour leader, Steve Fear, who warned the council a year ago it was “bound to lose,” said this week: “All the indications from the start of this process were that council house tenants did not want their homes transferred to a housing association. Despite this, the council spent £600,000 in a pointless effort to change tenants’ minds. That cost now has to be borne by local taxpayers.

“It is now time for the council cabinet to think long and hard about how to provide an improved and cost effective housing service.”

Chairman of South Wiltshire Defend Council Housing, Colin Burden, said: “We are delighted with the result of the ballot and the emphatic rejection by the tenants of the housing stock transfer.

“We hope the council will respect the democratic decision for the second time and join with other councils, who have retained housing, and actively press the government alongside tenants and unions for the fourth option (creating a level financial playing field between councils and housing association).

Mr Burden added an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money had been wasted by the council, and called for the resignations of Cllrs Cole-Morgan and Britton and the dissolution of the tenants’ panel in its present form.

Of his group’s campaign, he insisted: “This is a magnificent victory and a victory of substance over glossy style. It completely illustrates this proposal never represented the tenants’ viewpoint, and was never likely to.”

Councillor Cole-Morgan said: “I am, obviously, deeply disappointed by the overwhelmingly negative ballot, and very concerned by the adverse effect the decision against transfer will have on those living in social housing in Salisbury.

“Clearly, we either did not manage to communicate the benefits that transfer would bring well enough, or those who received the message things could not go on just as before did not believe us. In my view, we could not have done more to put the message over.”

On the issue of whether it was right or wrong to go to ballot, Cllr Cole-Morgan added: “The stock option process was thrust on us by government, and has been monitored by them throughout.

“Half-way through the process, our tenants gave us sufficient grounds to believe a positive outcome was possible. In the light of that, it would have been unfair, indeed improper, not to give them a chance to vote for a transfer which most council members believe would have been greatly to their advantage.”

Defend Council Housing Conference launches Open Letter to Blair

A DCH conference on May 22nd has agreed to step up the pressure on the government by launching an open letter to Tony Blair demanding the right for direct investment in Council Housing.

Tenants, trade unionists and councillors from across the UK met at the TUC in London for the DCH national conference on May 22. The conference launched a new Open Letter to Tony Blair as a focus to unite all those demanding the ‘Fourth Option’ to provide a long term secure future for council housing. The ‘Fourth Option’ directly benefits areas retaining council housing, those in ALMOs opposed to two-stage privatisation and those facing transfer, PFI or ALMO in the coming year.Jack Dromey reported to the conference that the Labour Party working group to address the ‘Fourth Option’ motion passed at their September conference was due to meet for the first time.

Download copies of the open letter to use in your area – get tenants, trade unionists, councillors and MPs to sign. Put motions through tenants and trade union organisations supporting the open letter, get leading tenants and union reps and councillors to write a letter to the local press and help get the open letter circulated as widely as possible.

Downlaod the Resolution passed at the Conference.Report from the Conference

Council tenants from across the country met with councillors and trade union delegates attending the DCH national conference at TUC Congress House in London. 42 areas were represented.The plenary session, chaired by Alan Walter heard from Michael Meacher MP, Jack Dromey, deputy general secretary T&G; Reg Edwards, Milton Keynes councillor; David Eggmore, UNISON London Local Government; Mike Tansey, Sunderland councillor and Eileen Short, from Tower Hamlets. Austin Mitchell MP on a Public Account delegation to US sent apologies along with Jenni Morrow, secretary Scottish Tenants Organisation.

Delegates split into four workshops. Janet Sillett from the Local Government Information Unit explained how the ‘fourth option’ can be funded and answered questions. Dexter Whitfield from the Centre for Public Services and Paul Burnham, a tenant involved in Haringey DCH, lead off a discussion on the ‘Future of ALMOs’. Eileen Short introduced ‘Organising Effective Local Campaigns’ and Lesley Carty briefed delegates on the Case Against Transfer.

Jack Dromey, T&G deputy general secretary, informed delegates that the Labour Party NEC working group set up to address the terms of the 2005 conference decision was finally going to meet: “two years running at the Labour Party conference there were overwhelming votes in favour of the ‘fourth option’ and they were until January of this year simply ignored by government and that’s absolutely wrong.”

“I must say that as well as the campaign for the ‘fourth option’ that I also think that we need a second string to our bow and that’s councils once again being able to engage in new build. In 1970 there were 172,000 council homes built. By 2001 councils built 487 council homes. In the same year RSLs they built only 22,000. So at a time when the trend is for more people wanting houses what we have got is a decline in social housing and at the heart of that is councils not being able to engage in new build.

But crucially at the next stages we need the twin objectives of on the one hand a free choice for tenants and that must mean a wider range of options open to councils and if tenants vote to stay with their council why should the council not have the resources to renovate council homes. And on the other hand because we need many more units of accommodation councils should be free once again be able to engage in new build with the support of government.

Now today is very well timed because it happens that we have finally have got started tomorrow, Tuesday, the debate within the party around the future options of the councils, including the fourth option and also councils once again engaging in new build. I have to say by the way that in January of this year that was agreed and here we are almost at the end of May but I raised very strongly ten days ago with the party secretary saying that look we can’t have the situation where two years running we ignore decisions then at last you agree to enter into a debate and then we wait the best part of five months and bugger all happens.

I think we conditioned the thinking and that debate will commence tomorrow. I don’t want to mislead. I wish that I could say today that we are going to be able to quickly make the kind of progress that we would like to see. But I tell you this. The door is open and it’s in our hands at the next stages as to how this progress is made. What’s been said is that there will be a process over the next eighteen months, leading up to the next comprehensive spending review, with housing a central issue within that, around those twin issues of councils being able to build and councils being able to renovate their housing stock.

I suspect that you like me will take the same view which is we are not going to wait for eighteen month for an outcome. And that then leads on to how we conduct ourselves at the next stages.”

I think it is disrespectful for tenants to say to tenants that you can have any choice provide that it is not the choice you want.

You can have the best arguments in the world but to break through what you need is overwhelming community and political pressure and from within the party pressure on government for a change of policy. That means therefore that all of us here today have got a very important role to play. Tenant activists at the sharp end working together with trade unionists and others. MPs like Micheal and Austin. A lot of good councillors who have bravely spoken out on this issue. Working together with us in the trade unions at national level so that we do is win the argument but also win then that change of policy. I am confident, like Michael, that we can do it. I applaud the work that you have done thus far and at the next stages, I’ll tell you what, us having forced that door, it’s not just people like me - it’s all of us together, all of us together - having forced that door open in government let’s go through that door and win what tenants deserve and that is a genuine choice for the future and councils once again engaging in new build.”

Michael Meacher MP, a member of the House of Commons Council Housing group supporting the campaign, criticised Ministers for saying:

“You can’t have money for investment in repairs and improvements unless you privatise, go to a housing association or to an ALMO. This is one of the great scandals of our time. Just look at the government’s own arguments. Well the government says they believe in real choice. ..Why can’t we choose to stay with our local authority and receive the same funding for council housing.

The government says that it believes in transparency and fairness. So do we all. How do they justify siphoning off this £2b a year in housing revenue account and right to buy receipts. How do you justify prohibiting councils from using their own rental income and the value of their own housing stock in order to support borrowing to fund housing improvements…”

Alan Walter, DCH chair, summed up where the campaign has got to:

“We’ve build an unprecedented alliance of tenants, trade unions, councillors and MPs. We’ve won the argument almost everywhere except in the Cabinet.

The government has come under sustained pressure in the last year, including: evidence from the House of Commons Council Housing group (May 2005); the Audit Commission call for a ‘review of housing finance (June 2005); 98 local authorities opting for stock retention (July 2005); the almost unanimous vote at the Labour Party conference (Sept 2005); the DCH Lobby of Parliament (Feb 2006), 144 MPs signing the current Early Day Motion and a growing proportion of NO votes including Sedgefield, Tower Hamlets, West Lancs, Waverley, Edinburgh, Selby, Mid-Devon, Cannock Chase and Waveney.

Our job now is to unite all those in the 98 authorities retaining their council homes, the 50 odd councils with ALMOs who don’t want the second stage of privatisation and help those facing new privatisation proposals to see the threat off in their area.

We need to take the open letter to Blair onto every council estate, get trade unionists signing up at work and ask every elected councillor to sign too. Ministers need to realise that come September, when the Labour Party conference meets again, the spotlight will be on whether they are capable of listening and respond to the overwhelming demand that they deliver on improving all our council homes and estates.”

1. Help get the open letter circulated as widely as possible
2. Download copies of the campaign open letter to use in your area
3. Get tenants, trade unionists, councillors and MPs to sign
4. Put motions through tenants and trade union organisations supporting the open letter
5. Ask leading tenants and union reps and councillors to write a letter to the local press urging others to sign too

“Home owning democracy” - What’s in a phrase?

A delegation from Swindon trades unions participated in the Parliamentary lobby on February 8th, in support of direct investment in Council Housing. One of the MP’s, Anne Snelgrove told us we live in a “home owning democracy”. What’s in a phrase?

South Swindon’s new Blairite MP Anne Snelgrove told a trade union delegation, participating in the Parliamentary lobby on February 8th, that we live in a “home owning democracy”. She was explaining why she was opposed to Councils building new Council housing. “Home owning democracy”; the phrase rang a bell. Didn’t Thatcher use it? Yes, in her assault on Council Housing she boasted of building a ‘home owning democracy’. This was why she introduced the ‘right to buy’ through which Council housing was given away to tenants with a massive discount. It was a conscious policy designed to destroy Council housing estates as bastions of electoral support for Labour. How could people with ‘capital’ vote Labour?

That a Blairite MP like Snelgrove can utter the phrase without the least embarrassment reflects the degree to which New Labour is rooted in the Thatcher legacy. Historically, democracy was something which working people had to fight for in the teeth of resistance from the British rulers. Even with the passing of the ‘Great Reform’ Act of 1832 (1) only around one in five males had the vote, women none at all. The franchise conceded was based on the value of the property you owned or lived in. Universal suffrage strictly speaking was not conceded until 1928, and even then, the phenomenon of double voting was not done away with until after the Second World War. So home ownership was an important part of the pseudo-democracy which Britain’s rulers conceded piecemeal in order to hang onto their wealth and power.No doubt Snelgrove does not mean by “home owning democracy” that those who do not own a home should not have the vote. Rather, it reflects the Thatcherite prejudices about ‘standing on your own two feet’, ‘welfare dependency’ etc, which Blair and his clones swallowed whole. We are all ‘Thatcherites’ now declared Peter Mandelson.New Labour is the “Party of aspiration” we are told. One New Labour councillor in Swindon some years back spoke with disdain about the fact that there were some families who lived on the Parks council estate for three generations! Can you imagine somebody preferring to live in a Council house rather than owning their own home? Obviously they lacked ambition and ‘aspiration’.

But the labour movement historically had collective aspirations. It wanted to improve the lot of the working class as a whole. New Labour has been created by people for whom personal advancement is their driving aspiration. Obviously anybody who lives in council accommodation cannot possibly be a “success” or they would be able to afford to buy their own home.One of the tenets of New Labour under Blair was that opposing the right to buy had been a big political mistake, from an electoral point of view. But the results of ‘right to buy’ were disastrous. In conjunction with what was effectively a ban on new Council House building (financially penalising Councils for building new stock), it created a massive shortage of Council Housing (2) and helped to drive up prices in the private housing market. The shortage forced people who might have been on a Council House waiting list, to buy their own house (often beyond their means).Many people bought their home because it was an offer which was too good to be true. The mortgage was often lower than the rent. However, what some did not think about was the cost of maintenance. On the estate which I live on you can see decaying housing which people snapped up but which they did not have the means to modernise, next to Council Housing which has had double glazing and central heating fitted. After the initial enthusiasm of purchase there was a high occurrence of repossession as new owners found themselves in financial difficulties, especially in the period of high unemployment.

Anne Snelgrove might have no problem uttering the mantra of Thatcher. However, it is worth pausing to consider the consequences of her policy (for the younger generations she is only a figure out of the history books), many elements of which have been left intact by New Labour. The commentary of Ian Gilmour, an opponent of hers within the Tory Party, throws an interesting light on her policy.The ‘right to buy’ was taken up, during Thatcher’s reign by 1.5 million families. Although in favour of selling Council homes to tenants, Gilmour complained that the government was “more concerned with diminishing the role of local authorities than with the provision of affordable homes”.“In consequence, so far from doing much to relieve the housing shortage, which it had inherited, the government by its policies, in some places drastically exacerbated it.”Nicholas Ridley, the Environment Secretary from 1986-9 was “determined to weaken the almost incestuous relationship between some Councils and their tenants”. A 1988 Housing Act encouraged the transfer of tenanted council estates to other landlords through ‘Housing Action Trusts’. The government rigged the voting system by counting those who did not vote as voting in favour of transfer! As Gilmour comments, despite the rigged system, the great majority of tenants decided to ‘continue to live in incest’.

At the time many Labour Councils and Councillors helped to lead the campaign against what was known as “pick a landlord”.When Anne Snelgrove says that Housing Action Trusts would be better building housing she forgets this Thatcherite attempt to destroy Council Housing.Gilmour continues: “Homelessness is far from new, but the sale of Council houses, backed by financial incentives (Thatcher’s favourite Council, Wandsworth, offered free holidays to tenants who bought their homes), required a high rate of council house building…or some alternative provision if it was not to lead to increased homelessness. Instead, local authorities were forbidden to spend more than a quarter of the revenue generated from council house sales on new homes and renovations. In so far as the government recognised the resulting problem of homelessness, it left it to be solved by the market. Thus the placing of homeless families in temporary accommodation by local authorities owed less to bad housing management, as the Thatcherites claimed, than to the financial restrictions that they themselves imposed onto the amount of money that could be spent on repairs to make empty properties inhabitable.

”Because local authorities were prevented by the government from providing new homes, they had (in the words of the chair of the then Conservative controlled London Borough Association) to “spend a fortune” on temporary accommodation for the homeless. “This waste of resources”, he said “completely frustrates our objective of achieving value for money and only adds to the appalling amount of human misery involved.”Ironically, for all the talk of “welfare dependency” what the Thatcher government did was to cut welfare to the poor and increase it to the rich. In 1979 subsidies to owner occupiers and council tenants were roughly equal. By the end of the 1980s the subsidy to council tenants had fallen to around £500 million, while the public handout to owner occupiers in the form of mortgage tax relief had climbed to £5.5 billion.As a result of the policies of the Thatcher government, in the words of Gilmour, the council house became “more and more the preserve of the very poor”.

Before the ‘right to buy’ Council estates comprised a wide cross section of working class people. One of the consequences of the social catastrophe for which the Thatcher government was responsible, was the growth of mass unemployment. Thatcher’s housing policy created conditions where the best stock was bought by those who could afford it. Whilst some people refused to buy out of principled opposition to the policy, probably the majority of those who could afford to buy, did so, thinking as individuals and ignoring the social consequences of their self-interest.

Progressively, Council housing comprised the poorest sections of the community. The absence of new building meant that very few people had a chance of getting accommodation under the points system by which priority was decided. Single parents became a large proportion of those in Council accommodation. The fact that only the most impoverished sections of the community tend to live in Council accommodation is reflected in the statistics. Up to two thirds of tenants receive benefit of one sort or another. Today many people who might have put their names on the list do not bother because the wait is so long.It is ironic that a ‘one nation’ Tory like Gilmour could see the consequences of Thatcher’s policy, but in contrast the ideological creators of New Labour, in the words of Mandelson wanted to “move forward from where Margaret Thatcher left off”, leaving in place much of her policy.

Like all Blairites, Anne Snelgrove appears to be prejudiced against social provision which was part and parcel of post-Second World War social democracy. She is opposed to Councils being given the right to build new stock. She believes in the ‘purchaser/provider’ split. She is convinced that private business is ‘more efficient’. Much better that the private sector provide housing, in her view.

Of course, Councils don’t have the resources to build Council Housing themselves. The one I live on was built by John Laing. But Council housing was considered necessary in order to tackle the problem of much of the population living in overcrowded and poor conditions. The history of private landlords in Britain is well known. “Take the money and do as little as possible to maintain the state of accommodation,” was the principle on which many of them operated. Council accommodation greatly improved the quality of life for millions of working class people.The Blair government’s policy on housing was rooted in Thatcher’s programme. They set out to remove Council Housing from the scene. They set themselves the target of transferring 200,000 houses a year. For Gordon Brown, getting rid of Council housing was a function of managing ‘his’ national balance sheet. It would make the book look better, removing historical housing debt from public accounts.

However, council tenants have a different point of view. Despite all the blackmail and all the tricks, many of them have resisted the transfer of their housing. It is not because they are in love with their councils. Indeed dealing with bureaucracy is one of the downsides of being a tenant. They have opposed privatisation because being a council tenant gives them an affordable home and security of tenure. And stories of life before the big building programmes are passed down from generation to generation. The Racnmanite landlord was a common figure only 40 years ago (3) .

After the delegation from Swindon had met our two MPs, we walked over to the Defend Council Housing rally in Westminster Hall. Gerald Kaufmann, the former Labour Minister, was speaking on the platform. The contrast with New Labour MPs could not have been more graphic. Kaufmann was on the right of the old Labour Party, a member of the last pre-Blair Labour government. Yet here he was not only demanding that Councils have the right to direct investment in their existing stock, but spoke of the need to build new council housing. He reminded us that Tory and Labour governments used to compete about how many Council Houses they had built.He confessed that when last in the government he had introduced legislation that had given Housing Associations the right to build public housing in conjunction with councils. But it was only conceived as a small niche. Never, he said, did he imagine that Housing Associations would end up as the sole provider of public housing. Housing Associations are considered providers of ‘social housing’. But, said Kauffman, a lot of his constituency work involved dealing with problems which tenants had with Housing Associations, which are unaccountable organisations. The only ‘public housing’ now built is the result of collaboration between Housing Associations and Local authorities, often accommodation for elderly people. But the amount being built is miniscule.

Anne Snelgrove did express the view that there is a need for more ‘affordable housing’. But the reality is that the housing market will not deliver it. The government is prepared to offer mortgage relief to private owners. It has been prepared to write off historical housing debt for councils whose tenants vote to transfer to another owner. It offers funds for the lunacy of people buying half a mortgage, giving them the privilege of paying mortgage and rent at the same time! Yet it still refuses to give Councils the right to build new Council Housing. It appears to be politically and ideologically opposed to such a thing. When Gordon Brown recently spoke about his belief in “21st century individualism” he more or less said that people will have to buy their own homes. Clearly he does not believe Councils should build any.However, the housing crisis will not be addressed by the market or by government help for people to buy. Personal debt is at historically unprecedented levels. The crisis can only realistically be addressed by a new programme of Council House building.

The government’s housing policy is in a state of disarray. Their attempt to eradicate Council Housing has been defeated by the resistance of tenants and trades unions. The campaign for the right of Councils to start building Council housing needs to be stepped up.

Notes
(1) The Prime Minister Grey explained: “The principle of my reform is to prevent the necessity of revolution…there is no one more dedicated against annual parliaments, universal suffrage, and the (secret) ballot than I am.”
(2) Ironically by relying on ‘market forces’ the concentration of wealth and economic activity has created a situation where in areas like Swindon there has been a massive increase in the Council House waiting list, whilst in other parts of the country, which have suffered an exodus of jobs and population, Council accommodation lies empty, with insufficient ‘demand’ for it.
(3) Rachman was a notorious slum landlord in London.