Mayor: ‘ALMOs will get £150m’
London mayor Boris Johnson has vowed to reinstate the money ‘raided’ from London’s decent homes budget to pay for Gordon Brown’s £1.5 billion housing pledge.
Mr Johnson has clashed with central government over its plans to defer £150 million of decent homes funding for arm’s-length management organisations until after 2011, to provide extra funds for house building. Seven of the affected ALMOs are in London.
And in a letter to housing minister John Healey this week Mr Johnson wrote: ‘I intend to make good those promises to Londoners… and will be instructing the London Homes and Communities Agency to ensure that funding is available in this year and 2010/11 for ALMOs that meet the two-star standard from the additional [affordable housing] resources you announced.’
Mr Johnson’s director of housing Richard Blakeway estimated this would cost the affordable housing programme between £60 million and £75 million, although he admitted that if all seven ALMOs in London achieved a two-star rating it would be more than £100 million.
The gesture raises fresh questions about whether the mayor can meet his election promise to deliver 50,000 new affordable homes by 2011.
ondon HCA director David Lunts warned recently that at current grant rates the agency did not have enough cash left to meet the target.
At the time Mr Blakeway insisted it was still possible, if London received a 42 per cent share of the extra £750 million affordable housing funding unveiled in the government’s housing pledge. But London received less than 28 per cent of the funds, and now plans to spend a chunk of cash on refurbishment of existing homes.
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Readers' comments (1)
Edward Leahy | 14/08/2009 8:47 am
In all the Decent Homes debate the place of the leaseholder has been noticeable
only by it's absence.
Ealing Homes an ALMO managing housing stock in the London Borough of Ealing sent out Section 20 notices regarding upcoming works to some 120 leaseholders on the Village Park Estate in Ealing in May 2009 the estimated costs to leaseholders vary from £4k to £16K an increase of over 100% on estimates sent out in Feb 2008.
The financial strain on leaseholders at this time of economic stress appears not to interest the ALMO or the Council concerned and legal advice appears to vary depending on which lawyer you speak to.
Can anyone with expertise tell us, succinctly, what our options are as we have finally got a meeting with the ALMO and council representatives set for 25th August. We are desparate as works are due to commence in September and time is running out.
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