HBC And The Proposed Housing Stock Transfer.

[jimmi5bellies]

Anybody in here living in council accomodation. Im wondering what your views are on the proposed transfer to the private sector. Im all for it. With the way HBC has started to treat its tennants you really have no choice but to vote "Yes".
A typical example is i live in a ground floor flat, we have no fencing around the back gardens. The garden is used as a short cut up to the next street. Trouble is when its being used for this reason, we get idiots who think its funny to start banging on your bedroom windows at 3am. Another example is last weekend we had yobs around the back with torches looking into the properties. What was their intensions ...robbery ? The police didnt catch them,but when you live on your own this can be a frightening experience.
Most council houses have a good economical heating system, mine is still on the so-called economy 7 which in truth i cannot afford to use unless i want a bill of over £600 for the winter months.
My list is endless,
I would like to hear your views on the subject.


Chrissie

[the real michael]

Originally Posted by jimmi5bellies

Anybody in here living in council accomodation. Im wondering what your views are on the proposed transfer to the private sector. Im all for it. With the way HBC has started to treat its tennants you really have no choice but to vote "Yes".
A typical example is i live in a ground floor flat, we have no fencing around the back gardens. The garden is used as a short cut up to the next street. Trouble is when its being used for this reason, we get idiots who think its funny to start banging on your bedroom windows at 3am. Another example is last weekend we had yobs around the back with torches looking into the properties. What was their intensions ...robbery ? The police didnt catch them,but when you live on your own this can be a frightening experience.
Most council houses have a good economical heating system, mine is still on the so-called economy 7 which in truth i cannot afford to use unless i want a bill of over £600 for the winter months.
My list is endless,
I would like to hear your views on the subject.


Chrissie

by voting yes to this transfer it just goes to show that most folk dont understand what this means...ist of all allow me to present you with some facts...
this is part of a list of questions put to hyndburn homes(barf) ...

Dear Sir

In relation to your e-mail request for information, I detail below the answers to your questions:



(1)...how much money was used in the making of all the booklets, papers and printed material used to promote this

offer...inc the videos etc....

To date £130,000 has been spent



(2) how many man hours has hyndburn homes spent on putting this whole scheme together from start to finish?

This is not the type of information which is kept. However, I can confirm that a team of five officers have been seconded to the process since August 2004.

(3) will this new firm be employing all the people who work for hyndburn homes now or will it be completely fresh "blood"?

The staff who currently work for Hyndburn Homes will all transfer over to the new Registered Social Landlord.

(4) how much will it cost annually in wages alone for this new

venture to operate, inc bonuses etc etc...

The estimated salary costs will be in the region of £2 million pounds, the same as currently incurred with the Council (this includes the staff of the repairs service).

(5)how much money would this firm have coming in on average from the gross rent of these properties...

The estimated rental income is approximately £7.7 million, again the same as currently estimated with the Council.



(6) will you be using the same sub-contractors you use now to repair these houses?

The repair of houses is currently undertaken by our in-house repairs service who will continue to repair the houses. All of the repairs staff would transfer to the new landlord. In relation to work undertaken by contractors in relation to both repairs and improvements, the same contractors will still be eligible to tender for work as currently happens.

(7) you say you plan to invest 35mil in 5 years but in reality this figure is only 16 mil more than you expect from the government which is 1.2 mil per year for a housing stock worth what?

An additional £3.2 million per annum would be spent on the housing stock in the first five years not £1.2 million. The value of the stock is £105 million. ...end of sample

if your adept at mathematics you should be aware that the difference between question
4 and 5 is according to them, not us is £5.7 MILLION ...yet they intend to spend just
£3.2 mil p.a. .......so in fact there will be no investment at all, you see the money has always been there but they squander it on other things such as employing cowboy subcontractors who in their bid to make more profit cut corners, resulting in the job needing to be done again and again...and again.. plus where is the other £2.5 mil from
the above paragraph? and what do you call this 2.5 mil if its not profit?

the council use the old "weve no money" as a lame excuse for their incompetance at doing a proper job...and should be replaced by fresher blood who can see whats really going on and put a stop to this madness...
i will remind you that the "troglodyke" known as margaret thatcher deceived the whole of britain by selling off the gas and electric co,s ...then the trains etc etc...and all the backhanders that went with these swindles...jobs for the boys when the cons were ousted etc...
hyndburn council are doing the same to these tenants as thatcher did to this country...
shafting you! if any tenants out there have voted yes i can only say that you never gave it much thought did you or bothered yourself enough to find out what this really means?
in sept the law changes whereas landlords will be prosecuted for lesser crimes than what hyndburn council has done (or not done) , by voting yes, you will be giving hyndburn homes a free meal ticket for life, and exonerating them from their responsibilities they were paid for to do...and make a few capitalist extremely rich by means of giving them the deeds to your properties... hyndburn council should be made liable and held responsible for many decades of bad management...dont say i didnt warn you...

p.s. perhaps we should make these public servants live at walmsley close est or huncoat for the rest of their lives and then see if they find the money...and there is no law to stop you from ripping those leccy heaters out and taking them to the tip where they belong
it was just another dodgy deal to get us poor folk to pay through the nose for fuel which should be a fraction of what it is... may the truth set you free...Michael...

[loopylass]

tenants in ossie wont get there houses done up cuz they dont need it, but the houses in huncoat will be done up cuz they a dump, so ppl of ossie, should vote no cuz they getting nowt out of it!!

[panther]

i heard summat about that too, tenants would be mad to vote yes!

[Graham Jones]

Originally Posted by the real michael

the council use the old "weve no money" as a lame excuse for their incompetance at doing a proper job...and should be replaced by fresher blood who can see whats really going on and put a stop to this madness...

Spot on.

[The vote was 79% voted yes, 21% no] The total cost of transfer in lawyers and accountants is £3m alone. The value of the stock still left is between *£200m-£250million [not £103m - thats council crap for do as your told] though it is illegal for Councils to sell Council Houses on the open market.

*3500 houses x £70,000 = £250m approx. Around 40% of the stock has been sold so far and I would guess that was the better stock averaging £90,000 at todays prices - another £230m

Without right to buy the capital value of Hyndburn Folk's investements through the decades through their council tax would now be worth around £400m-£450m in total or around £15,000 per every household in Hyndburn.

The costs of having private sector landlords providing 40% of social housing has been very expensive. High rents [£90-100pw instead of £55 pw] often paid by the taxpayer through housing benefit, absent/irresponsible landlords, benefit dependency, anti socail behaviour, transient/rootless households with little need to care where they live or the harm they inflict.

"we've no money" is a tired lame excuse for a bunch of losers who have done the borough a great diservice. Not a single pennny from right to buy receipts has foundits way back into housing. A guesstimate of £8m, most of that in the last few years. Overcharging of central council services, ie using council houses to cross subsidise other council activities. Unwilingness to borrow given the governments relaxation on Council House borrowing.

The problem with the yes campaign was everyone was bought off. Britcliffe and his Tory cronies will get all council house debts written off £21m through the sale to Contour Housing, approximate recipt from the sale £4m [yes a pathetic £4m!] and a debt write off sweetner from the government of tax payers money to teh tune of £25m. This leaves Britcliffe with an £8m surplus to buy off as many voters as possible with his Viv "spend spend spend" Nicholson cheque. All the officers will of course get massive wage rises. They were all in it to con the public into a yes vote. At the end of the day they are promising £150m of investment [which will take a decade - no one told the public that when promising new bathrooms and kitchens] and the council £80m. But this figure is false. With RTB, greater efficiency, prudent borrowing it could have risen to £110m and should the govt give Councils voting no what they are giving those that vote yes it would have been way in excess of £150m.

[chav1]

eventualy rents will be put up so our council tax bills will rise to pay for the extra rent

thats the way i see it anyway

[harwood red]

I can only speak by working for a housing association that took over council properties in voluntary stock transfer and part of the agreement is that the rents cannot be raised by more than 1% above inflation and 4 years later our rent is still way below other registered social landlords rents. We have also just completed year 3 of improvements to the housing stock which includes new kitchens, bathrooms, heating, double glazing but one point I can make is that alot of these improvements do NOT include fencing as we have prioritised the actual properties. We have an ongoing assessment of fencing and I am hoping we will be improving them over the years to come. We send questionnaires to all tenants every other year to ask them how they think we are doing and YES we do act on things people are not happy with. Saying all this I am unsure of whether this is what will happen with Hyndburn Homes but thought you might like to hear another side.

ps All the staff who worked for the council housing had the option to tranfer over to the new company

[cashman]

glad i dont live in rented,what the real micheal n graham say is spot on in my opinion,seen the same sort of SCAM many times over the years,an people always seem to fall for it,then live to regret.

[chav1]

Originally Posted by harwood red

I can only speak by working for a housing association that took over council properties in voluntary stock transfer and part of the agreement is that the rents cannot be raised by more than 1% above inflation and 4 years later our rent is still way below other registered social landlords rents. We have also just completed year 3 of improvements to the housing stock which includes new kitchens, bathrooms, heating, double glazing but one point I can make is that alot of these improvements do NOT include fencing as we have prioritised the actual properties. We have an ongoing assessment of fencing and I am hoping we will be improving them over the years to come. We send questionnaires to all tenants every other year to ask them how they think we are doing and YES we do act on things people are not happy with. Saying all this I am unsure of whether this is what will happen with Hyndburn Homes but thought you might like to hear another side.

ps All the staff who worked for the council housing had the option to tranfer over to the new company

i have no idea how this works but my understanding of the rent benifit is as follows and may be wrong

council owned property - rent benefit paid by council to tennants who then pay the money back to the council as rent so in theory the council get the money back

council property sold to housing assosiations - council pay rent to tennants who then pay rent to the housing assosiation and make the directors of the companies rich


would that be a fair assesment of how the money travels , like i said i dont know for sure how it works but that seems a sensible if not acurate guess

[jimmi5bellies]

wow >>>> good replies.
The street i live on is the only one in the area which has not been developed since they was built (exterior i mean), from the outside all the houses look like they have been fired. I have my front wall splattered in paint from the last tennant as well as the front door ! these were promised to be rectified before i moved in. Im still waiting (moved in last October). Ive now been told to live with it as they have no money. We are inundated with rats and fly-tippers (yes, that was me in the papers last week by the way), lol. After sending HBC a letter telling them to clean the area i live in and giving them 6 weeks notice the only way i could get action was by going to the press. Mind you got to admit that what made me snap was the day i came home from hospital my cats had missed me so much they all fetched a rat home for me ! >>> stunned but still alive (well not for long).
I agree with the cowboy council workmen but just got to admit in defence, some of the lads do know what they are doing.

[harwood red]

The directors of a stock transfer housing association are on a salary same as all the staff (although I'm sure they are hefty salaries). They are also run as not for profit assoc's which are governed by the Housing corporation (and they certainly do their checks!). Yes the rental income does go back to the Housing assoc but at the same time all repairs and improvements are also done by the Housing assoc. the council will be no longer responsible for any property repairs and in many cases even the grass cutting. In our case we still use the Direct Services Dept as sub-contractors aswell as other local firms also. The main reason councils decide on a stock transfer is purely down to a government housing standards directive which is coming into force to say properties have to be up to a certain standard by a certain year(unsure which year it is). Many councils have now found themselves in the position that they are unable to get their properties up to standard financially in time. The big difference being Housing assoc's can apply for loans raised against the housing stock that councils cannot. That is the biggest factor!