Transfer council fails to justify methods
A Welsh council faces an appeal over a positive stock transfer ballot after failing to justify a decision to withhold data from anti-transfer campaigners.
The information commissioner in Wales has rejected the reasons given by Neath Port Talbot for not releasing the addresses of its 9,300 homes to Defend Council Housing.
The campaign group wanted to send literature against the council’s plans to hand over its homes to a housing association.
The commissioner has already ruled that the council should have released the addresses.
The council has since responded to the commissioner, but the watchdog has written back saying the reasons given do not change the preliminary findings.
It has given the council until 13 September to come up with further arguments.
A final decision will then be made and the council could be requested to release the information.
Huw Pudner, of the Defend Council Housing campaign, said the group would be appealing against the tenant ballot, which saw a vote in favour in March. Just over 56 per cent of the tenants voted in favour of stock transfer.
The council had estimated it would cost around £152 million over the next six years to bring its homes up to the Welsh housing quality standard.
Mr Pudner was to write to the Welsh housing minister Jocelyn Davies calling for the stock transfer to be halted.
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Readers' comments (17)
kass | 26/08/2010 9:31 am
Have the secure tenants been informed that if the transfer goes through they will lose their secure tenancy as it has happened in England?
Any tenant who voted for a transfer should retehink, and realise that they are not losing their own secure tenancy if they have one, but also force their fellow tenants who have one to lose it.
A new kitchen or bathroom is not worth it if your tenancy becomes less secure.
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Melvin Bone | 26/08/2010 9:52 am
'A new kitchen or bathroom is not worth it if your tenancy becomes less secure.'
Easy for you to say with your Italian marble bathroom with whirlpool bath and granite worktops with hand crafted solid oak units in your kitchen.
I think the council has made a serious error and should re-ballot.
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kass | 26/08/2010 10:35 am
Melvin Bone | 26/08/2010 9:52 am
"Easy for you to say with your Italian marble bathroom with whirlpool bath and granite worktops with hand crafted solid oak units in your kitchen."
It is a London and Quadrant flat with no insulation, with laminate flooring on the floor above to make it even worse, with endless stream of people coming and going in the uninsulated communal area, with floorbaords shaking under you each times people use the communal area - and there is lots of them coming and going every time of day and night...
with frequent floodings from the flat above, with external rain water pipes used as waste paper pipes, with laminate
flooring on the flat above to make it worse...
and I will not add more as I'd like to keep you in suspense for the rest.
As for my kitchen and bathroom go back to the middle ages.
You said in the other thread you wanted my flat, so when are you moving in?
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Melvin Bone | 26/08/2010 11:51 am
'You said in the other thread you wanted my flat, so when are you moving in?'
You put in your right to buy with the hefty discount and I promise I'll buy it from you. I'm sure I can still make a killing renting it out even with the capped HB rates...
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kass | 26/08/2010 12:13 pm
Melvin Bone | 26/08/2010 11:51 am
London and Quadrant do not allow right to buy...
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Anonymous | 26/08/2010 12:50 pm
Over the months I have been Very interested with the comments Kass Has made most of which I have been in agreement with. But the comment you have just made about L&Q not giving Tenants the right to buy I believe is wrong If you go on their Site you can down load a leaflet which explains, all about how too do it.
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Melvin Bone | 26/08/2010 1:03 pm
Hmmm.
It seems that most L&Q tenants do have a right to buy/acquire:
http://www.lqgroup.org.uk/_assets/files/right-to-buy-info-for-lq-tenants-711.pdf
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kass | 26/08/2010 1:06 pm
Anonymous | 26/08/2010 12:50 pm
I am referring to existent residents right to buy the property they are renting - which is what Melvin Bone meant... Is this what you mean they have introduced now or recently?... If this was the case surely they would have let it know to all their existing residents.
I am NOT referring to any other scheme to buy or property share L&Q might have for new tenants, these are different schemes.
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kass | 26/08/2010 1:20 pm
It seems right to buy is for tenants who have transferred to L&Q from councils where they already had this right.
But when I asked some time ago I was told I had no right to buy.
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Tim Powell | 26/08/2010 2:47 pm
With the very interesting discourse concerning Kass and Melvin's kitchens this thread seems to have moved away from the substance of the news item. I just wondered in what ways Kass believes that an Assured Tenancy with an RSL is "less secure" than a Secure Tenancy with a council? And with regard to The Right to Buy, Secure tenants of a local authority at the point it transfers its stock enjoy The Preserved Right to Buy as long they continue to occupy a 'qualifying' property. This is a stautory right rather than a contractual right contained in a tenancy agreement. Tenants who were not secure or who become tenants of the stock transfer organisation after the transfer do enjoy The Right to Acquire although properties in certain rural communities are exempt.
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