This is a Swindon TUC Press Release

The national Defend Council Housing campaign estimates that Swindon is under-funded to the tune of £11 million a year in its allocation for management, maintenance and repair of its 10,000 council houses.

“Most local authorities have insufficient resources to manage, maintain, repair and improve council homes. The main reason is that government has been siphoning money out of council housing year on year.”

The amount paid by tenants on the national level is £6.4 billion, yet local Councils receive only £4.7 billion in allowances. In other words tenants are subsidising the government to the tune of £1.7 billion a year! Swindon currently receives £9 million less than is raised in rent from our tenants.

The DCH estimate is that total allowances to manage, maintain and repair tenant’s homes should be £33.54 million instead of the £22.23 million received under the present system.

The government’s robbery of council rents is actually set to increase. Their ‘draft subsidy determination’ for 2009-10 indicates that the difference between the amount of rent tenants pay and the grants local authorities receive is due to increase by £248 million, meaning that tenants will have £1.83 billion taken by the government.

Swindon TUC Secretary Martin Wicks said:

“This report from DCH underlines the fact that Swindon Council has been significantly under-funded so far as Council Housing is concerned. We are demanding that the government stops stealing our council rents. If they did so we would have £9 million a year extra to ensure that the stock was maintained to a high standard and fully modernised.

It would also enable Councils to start building Council Housing once again and tackle the chronic housing shortage which the private market and government prejudice against Council housing has created. In Swindon the waiting list has risen above 8,000 whilst nationally it is 1.7 million families.”

For further comment ring Martin Wicks on 07786 394593

See the DCH report:
http://swindontuc.wordpress.com/2008/10/06/swindon-council-housing-underfunded-to-the-tune-of-11-million/

See also the Local Government Association paper “My rent went to Whitehall”
http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/publications/publications-display.do?id=772276

Visit the Defend Council Housing site at:
http://www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk