From the archive - week of 13 February

25 years ago

A climbdown from the Scottish Office saw new town corporation tenants north of the border get a chance to select their local authority as their transfer organisation. The move gave Scottish new town tenants the same choice as their counterparts in England, where housing associations and councils could compete over former new town stock.

In a letter to Scotland’s five new town corporations, Scottish secretary Ian Lang said: “I will place no prior limit as such on the extent to which you consider the local authority as an option for successor landlord.”

James Hayton, deputy director of East Kilbride Council at the time, welcomed the decision but hoped the council would be put on an equal footing with other potential landlords, allowing it to compete on rent levels.

15 years ago

One of the largest housing co-operatives in western Europe was ordered to hand over its stock – which housed 450 single homeless people – to the Housing Corporation following reports of “Third World standards” within the organisation. Clays Lane Housing Co-operative became the first to face an asset transfer order since the 1996 Housing Act beefed up the regulator’s power.

An unpublished Housing Corporation report, seen by Inside Housing, cited a litany of problems, including committee mismanagement, inadequate financial controls and a report of a physical fight during a committee meeting. The report described “a deep-seated and systemic failure” at the co-op. A committee member spoke of a “state of chaos, the loss of a substantial amount of money” and “horrendous” conditions.

Following the report, sent to Clays Lane in May 2001, the Housing Corporation ordered the transfer of homes to Peabody Trust. But the co-operative retaliated, slamming the regulator for failing to act on its problems early enough, adding that, since the report, it had met eight out of 10 of the corporation’s improvement targets.

Five years ago

David Cameron’s claim that private rents were falling as a result of his government’s welfare reforms were revealed to be untrue by Inside Housing research.

A month earlier, the prime minister told parliament “rent levels have come down, so we have stopped ripping off the taxpayer”. Number 10 later clarified the statement, claiming private landlords were cutting rents in return for Local Housing Allowance (LHA) being paid directly to them. But a series of Freedom of Information Act requests of English councils found just 36 out of 204 authorities had seen any rent reductions in exchange for direct LHA payment.

Labour’s shadow housing minister Jack Dromey said the story “explodes the myth that rents are falling”.