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Affordable Housing in Westminster – a brilliant way to start a Pimlico Blog, does it mean Westminster, the local authority, or Westminster that remote fiefdom where decisions are made and passed down? Well on this occasion it’s both.
The Slow Motion Train Crash – an allusion to transport, the thousands who will be leaving Central London for other places. In an earlier, and maybe greener, age Norman Tebbit famously told the unemployed to get on their bikes and find work, Grant Shapps has been wise enough not to utter the words “get on the train”, but that’s what 5000 from Westminster have to do (Westminster City Council May 2011). The Shapps-Pickles plan hasn’t been uniformly supported – referred to as “Kosovo-style social cleansing” by Mayor of London, and David Cameron’s likely successor as leader of the Conservative party, Boris Johnson.
Now whilst there were arguments on the table that the country could not afford our burgeoning Housing Benefit budget (now known as LHA) it was difficult to resist the argument that cuts had to to be made regardless of the social consequences. Hopes have been put forward that the Private Rented Sector (that’s private Landlords to you and me) would trim their rents to match the new LHA rates, however all the indications are that this particular straw is not to be clutched. Nevertheless the government has driven forward their policy, in the face of arguments that:
- the social cost to families uprooted from the areas where they had been born & bred would be enormous.
- the financial cost to local government in relocating services such as schools and health care wasn’t being factored in to the decision.
Over the weekend, and most extraordinarily, a leaked letter has emerged, sent from the DCLG to the office of the Prime Minister, setting out the concerns at the effects of the Government policy to cap total welfare benefit payments to any one household at £500 per week. The letter confirms what critics of government policy have been saying:
- 20,000 families will become homeless from private sector accommodation.
- An additional 20,000 families will become homeless from the separate limits on housing benefit.
- The £270 million pa from 2013/4 savings in welfare benefits that the policy is projected to save will be exceeded by a substantial amount by the extra welfare costs that local authorities will have to bear.
- The stated aim of 56,000 new homes to be built for ‘affordable housing’ would fall short by 50% because of the welfare cuts.
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Whilst it isn’t unusual for government policy to get things wrong, what seems unprecedented is the fact that the letter was written 6 months ago and made no difference to policy. The government is deliberately imposing a policy that it knows will be socially divisive, and of major cost to the public purse. What exactly is the purpose of this policy?
I can’t help wondering whether there are any parallels with the 1980s policies of Dame Shirley Porter who while leader of Westminster City Council oversaw the “Building Stable Communities” policy, later described as the “homes for votes” scandal. The thing is – what is Nick Clegg going to say when he realises that 40,000 Labour Party voters are being moved from Conservative to Liberal-Democrat Constituencies?
Full text of letter from the office of Eric Pickles
Unintended clarity from the DCLG
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