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Power sharing

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The coalition is very good at handing power to local authorities, but it has a nasty habit of getting upset when councils don’t use the powers as it would like. Fixed-term tenancies are the latest example of this.

Inside Housing spent the week before Christmas phoning councils to ask them about their tenancy strategies and allocations policies. What we found out wasn’t entirely surprising, but is interesting nonetheless.

Our research shows the majority of councils – 29 of the 50 that got back to us – don’t intend to introduce fixed-term tenancies. We also found a sharp spilt along political lines, with 25 of the councils that are rejecting fixed-term tenancies being Labour controlled, and 12 of those that aren’t being led by the Conservatives.

When we asked the Communities and Local Government department for a response to this, we got a fairly strong comment from housing minister Mark Prisk saying councils should be using fixed-term tenancies.

This seems odd, because surely the point of giving councils the freedom to set their own policies is to allow them to make policies that meet local need. If they don’t think they need fixed-term tenancies, then shouldn’t they be allowed to just get on with it?

Perhaps what the minister is most concerned about is Labour authorities neutering coalition government plans. Last year we had communities secretary Eric Pickles laying into Labour councils for not buying into his right to buy dream, and this could be the latest example of the Conservative-led government clashing with Labour authorities.

If that is the case – and the political divide in our survey would support that – then it is a pretty worrying development. The whole point about localising housing policy is to ensure those policies help people more effectively. If the agenda is instead being used as a political points scoring exercise then there must be a concern that the decisions being made are not those that would be of most benefit to households.

With the half way point of the coalition government’s initial term in office reached, the next two years could see policies increasingly developed to meet political rather than social aims at both local and national level.

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