Saturday, November 6, 2010

Greenwich to sell off housing stock?

Rumour has it that "Greenwich Council's Labour group have voted through a proposal to transfer all council homes to another owner with a 50% rent increase to 20% below the commercial market value. They have also scrapped right to buy and will issue all tenants with a new lease with no security..."

Can anyone confirm/refute/tell us more?

5 comments:

  1. I know Greenwich Labour was planning to create a stand-alone company to run 28 properties at a rent above normal council rents, but below market rents.

    AFAIK I don't think they'll budge from their general principle of hanging onto council housing - they're very proud of the ones they're building, including the ones next to Elverson Road station.

    Greenwich Conservatives have an impenetrable press release about this, even though they voted *for* the creation of this company.

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  2. a new lease with no security?

    Err...that is how most Londoners live...

    Why should someone have a place for life - no wonder we have unemployment with such social imobility.

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  3. Thanks Darryl. Your Tory link leads to Council page which is where one should've gone first before publishing hysterical rumours...
    http://committees.greenwich.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=119&MId=1760&Ver=4

    But that was July, and the (unpublished) inference was that it could happen in Lewisham, which would be far less surprising...

    Next time, will run things past you first.

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  4. Well, see point 20 from the last full meeting of Greenwich Council to see how Greenwich Labour are just as happy as the Tories to use council tenants as political capital. Pennycook is the Labour councillor for Greenwich West - Berthon Street upwards, more or less.

    Greenwich and Lewisham don't like each other very much - despite being supposedly Labour councils. The Blackheath fireworks funding fiasco proved that. I wouldn't expect one to follow the other in anything, frankly, except in following lemmings over a cliff.

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  5. Hmm, maybe they are testing the waters...
    First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin..

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