Selling off the silver

A Lewisham Council employee reports on the reality of housing privatisation in South London.

Lewisham Council is spending lots of money promoting a local housing company in three of the borough's 16 housing neighbourhoods, which will form Lewisham Community Homes (LCH). Freed from public sector borrowing restrictions LCH will borrow to carry out essential repairs neglected for years. Rents will rise in line with council rents for five years. Councillors and tenants would form part of the board, along with local businessmen (which means Citibank, the only large private employer in the borough).

The three neighbourhoods were chosen because of their asset value rather than because of needs. Only tenants in the three neighbourhoods will be balloted -- Lewisham knows that if it lets all tenants vote it would lose. But the sale affects all tenants. It reduces the asset base of the whole council and increases the unit cost of central services, leading to cuts in staff and repairs, or rent rises, or both. The remaining 13 neighbourhoods are set to go down the same route -- but presumably not those estates with negative value. In July, the Assistant Director of Housing said there would be five local housing companies in all, which would mean one for each of the Assistant Directors. Fat cats feathering their nests or what?

A local campaign against housing privatisation, run by Lewisham Socialist Alliance, must now build a broader coalition around a Vote No campaign. The Council has employed consultants to sell the idea to tenants, but it is unlikely that similar resources will be made available to tenants campaigning against it. The Federation of Lewisham Tenants and Residents Associations, funded by a levy on Lewisham tenants, has said that it wants a co-op run by tenants instead of the LCH idea, but either way, the same arguments apply q

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