Assembly Minister's flagship policy under attack from her own local Labour party

9.02.52am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 15th Sep 2006

A Welsh Assembly Minister's flagship policy of encouraging Councils to transfer their housing stock so as to pay for improvement and repair work is under public attack from her own local Labour Party.

Social Justice Minister, Edwina Hart, has directed local authorities to bring their council housing up to the Welsh Housing Quality Standard by 2012. She has told them that if they cannot afford to do this from their own resources then they must ask tenants for permission to transfer the houses to a not-for-profit housing association. This is a course of action currently being pursued in Swansea, where Mrs. Hart has her constituency base.

However, the Minister's policy has now come under direct attack from her own local Labour Party, who have raised a number of fundamental questions about the policy and who are seeking to put a halt to the Swansea tenants' ballot. This is despite the fact that the process of drawing up options that led to the ballot process was started by Labour when they ran the Council.

In a motion to the next meeting of Swansea Council, Labour Councillors have called on the authority to stop promoting housing stock transfer. They give as their reason a range of allegedly unanswered questions, all of which could be dealt with by a visit to the Minister's next surgery. According to local Welsh Liberal Democrat Assembly Member, Peter Black, this is gross hypocrisy.

"Labour Councillors are fully aware of the need to improve council tenants' homes," he said. "They also know that this cannot be done from the Council's own resources. There is a £200 million shortfall between what the Council can afford and what is needed to do this work."

"Having set this process in motion in the first place, Labour also know the answers to their own questions. Rents will be guaranteed by the business plan for five years and then regulated by the Assembly in the long term; the improvement plan is both costed and realistic, as is evidenced from work going on in Bridgend, who transferred their housing some years ago; surplus housing land will be retained by the Council; whilst staff will have their terms and conditions protected and tenants will remain secure in their own homes as long as they adhere to the conditions of their tenancy. Once the decision to proceed to a ballot is taken more information will be made available to tenants to help them make up their mind."

"The only conclusion that can be drawn from this motion is that the Labour group is posturing to appease those on the left of their party. In doing so however, they are undermining the authority of the Minister, who is an important figure in the Swansea and Gower Labour Party. She cannot be pleased to have her flagship policy challenged in her own backyard in this way by her own colleagues."

Ends

The Labour motion to Council reads:

Housing Stock Transfer

Housing Stock Transfer provides the most significant change to the provision of social housing in the history of local government. Tenants are shortly to be asked to vote on this highly controversial issue even though there remain significant areas of concern and unanswered questions in respect of the long-term affect on rents, an achievable (and realistic) work/improvement programme, and the absence of assurances on the disposal (and control) of 'housing' land and the long-term security of both tenants and transferred staff and many other issues.

This Council therefore resolves to halt the promotion of Housing Stock transfer to its tenants until a fair and balanced case can be developed that identifies and answers all the pros and cons of the matter and can provide the long-term assurances to which tenants and staff are entitled.