Housing Co-operatives

Part of Petitions – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 20 December 1985.

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Photo of Mr David Alton Mr David Alton , Liverpool Mossley Hill 2:30, 20 December 1985

I have the privilege of opening the last debate of the last sitting before Christmas and, indeed, of this year. That gives me the opportunity to extend seasonal greetings to you and your family, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and to the Minister and his. It also enables me to comment on the appropriateness of debating housing at a time when we celebrate a feast with such obvious significance for the homeless and the badly housed.

My interest in housing co-operatives predates my entry into the House and originated when I was chairman of Liverpool council's housing committee. I believe in housing co-operatives because they offer the best way of giving tenants a stake and a say in their communities. I believe in them because, from my experience of representing people in the inner city during the past 13 years—as a local councillor or as a Member of Parliament—I am convinced that the traditional landlord-tenant relationship has failed badly. A passing glimpse at sprawling, faceless, badly-maintained municipal estates confirms my belief.

Planners and politicians have waged war against entire communities, slowly and deliberately running down neighbourhoods and depriving people of their homes, roots and identities. In their place, the "we-know-best" politicians have created nightmare developments which people have rejected utterly. One need look no further than Manchester's Hulme or Liverpool's Netherley to see the dire consequences of Labour and Tory housing policies during the past 20 years. I opposed the construction of Netherley in 1972; 13 years later, it is being demolished with about 47 years of debt charges remaining to be paid. In my constituency, two 20-year-old blocks of flats—Entwistle Heights and Milner House—are being demolished, with 40 years of debt charges remaining.

It is a bitter and costly legacy. But perhaps most damaging of all is that, in destroying the "Coronation Street" communities, family life and support has been wrecked. In the past, many inner-city communities were like large happy families, until the politicians came along and scattered the people to the winds.

The housing co-operative movement has recognised people's desire to take over from the planners and take control of their homes. Nowhere has that desire been so potent as in Liverpool, where thousands of people recognise housing co-operatives as the opportunity to realise their most cherished dreams. In a city where one in five is unemployed and many have low incomes, the right-to-buy legislation is not an option. But that should not preclude people from having the opportunity to realise their cherished dreams.

I have been saddened by the response of the Labour-controlled council to those who wish to have their own homes, but who cannot afford to buy them. The Rochdale Pioneers must be turning in their graves as they see Socialists putting every possible obstacle in the path of people who wish to shake off the municipal, corporatist yoke.

The Minister will be aware of the heroic struggle and the fight waged by the Eldonian housing co-operative in Liverpool. Its leader, Tony McGann, and his brave committee have faced every sort of threat from municipal bully-boys. Their original planning application was opposed on completely trumped-up grounds, with the council subsequently being overruled by the Secretary of State on appeal. Attempts were also made to bribe and intimidate tenants to break ranks and move out into newly-built council properties. Labour used every dirty trick in the book to try to break the spirit of that co-operative. It has happened in other developments, too. Portland gardens was to have been a housing co-operative, but it was municipalised, snatching away from people who saw homes being built opposite them the chance of homes of their own. Those properties were sequestrated by the local council and taken away from those tenants.

Furthermore, the local Merseyside Improved Housing association, which had been backing the Portland gardens development, lost about £40,000 on abortive work on the scheme. That, too, is public money.

Tenants at the Mill street co-operative were told by the local housing department that if they resigned they would immediately be offered houses—if they got out of the co-op, they would be given somewhere decent to live—but if they chose to remain, no repairs would be done to their homes.

The latest attempt by local Labour leaders is to change the allocations policy so that tenants who believed that they would be able to move into housing co-operatives will now be denied that chance. Every possible obstacle has been put in the path of people who want to live in housing co-operatives.

That bitter experience has convinced me that a new Act to guarantee the rights of co-operators is needed urgently. A right-to-co-operate Bill should be introduced at the earliest opportunity in the new year and should guarantee in law the rights of tenants who take on the full might of the council landlords.

The Eldonians were a particularly strong group. They had the support of their local councillors, some of whom were moderates in the Labour group. I admire them immensely for the way in which they stood up to the local Militants. The Eldonians also had the support of the Archbishop of Liverpool and of the Liberal group on the city council. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Steel), the leader of the Liberal party, met that group at one of its meetings and gave it his personal support.

The Eldonians' fight has secured for them £6 million of housing investment in Liverpool. The housing will be managed by the tenants. That is jobs; that is services; that is homes. How ironic it is that political leaders, who never stop parroting those phrases, should have been in the vanguard in trying to prevent that investment and those homes from coming to Liverpool.

The Eldonians were fortunate to have the support of the Merseyside Improved Housing association in their fight. The work of that association has been magnificant, and I pay particular tribute to the chief officer, Mr. Barry Natton, to Tom Clay, who has done much of the groundwork, and to the other members of the team. Merseyside Improved Housing backed its commitment to housing associations by putting its money where its mouth was. It put £150,000 into the Eldonians' scheme alone, and £50,000 of that will ultimately be a direct subsidy which is not reclaimable.

Merseyside Improved Housing cannot afford to do that every time, as my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) learned last Friday when we visited St. Andrew's gardens in my constituency and met the fledgling Bronte housing co-operative. The members of that co-operative need resources and help desperately. Representatives of Merseyside Improved Housing came to that meeting and will happily provide the professional advice and skills, but they must be backed up by resources.

The Department of the Environment's funds for housing co-operatives are lamentably small. The Minister for Housing, Urban Affairs and Construction told me last month in answer to my question about grants under section 121 of the Housing Act 1980: I consider that the present arrangements are satisfactory: the total provision for such grants in 1985–86 is £342,700 of which £94,700 has been set aside for co-operatives".—[Official Report, 25 November 1985; Vol. 87, c. 381.] In other words, less than £100,000 has been provided throughout the country for the development of housing co-operatives through grants under the 1980 Act. I have given an example of one co-op which required £50,000 to get only one scheme off the ground.

The Housing Corporation provides a co-operative promotion allowance, but that is only £2,100 per scheme. The Minister told me in another written answer: The level of co-operative promotion allowance for 1986–87 is currently being considered as part of the annual review of all housing association grant allowances. The Minister admitted that the current rates were only £2,135 per scheme for projects in the provinces, and slightly more in London. He went on to say: The rates to take effect from 1 April 1986 will be promulgated early in 1986."—[Official Report, 27 November 1985; Vol 87, c. 570.] That gives the Minister the opportunity to review those small allowances. The Government should take into account as well the size of the scheme and an additional per unit allowance should be made available.

Thirdly, we should be looking at the funding for repair grants, the upper limit of which is about £200. That is not enough money if one lives in a run-down fiat in the middle of a hard-to-let development on a peripheral council estate. The House must pass legislation or bring in orders that will enable more money to be made available to tenants who want to turn around their estates. If special grants, such as repair grants, were given where people formed housing co-operatives, they could act as a catalyst and be responsible for tackling the major problem of hard-to-let and empty property that we see on so many of the big municipal developments.

There is a need for plurality of funding from a number of different pockets both in the Housing Corporation and in the Department of the Environment. The present derisory sums are hopelessly inadequate. None of the existing mechanisms recognises this most difficult and important work and the struggle that so many tenants have to mount without professional advice or expertise.

As an illustration of how low a priority such action is at the moment, I point out that the Housing Corporation nationally allocated only half of one person's time specifically to housing co-operatives, and that is not good enough. I hope that the Minister will say that the Government will look again at funding the need for more professional backing and help. If the housing co-operatives succeed, they will form a springboard for more co-operative ventures. The Mondragon experience in Spain came about when groups of unemployed Basques got together with the help of the local priest to set up a people's bank. They put their savings into the bank and financed the development of workers' co-operatives. That experience could be repeated in areas such as central Liverpool, which can work on the basis of a successful housing co-operative.

Housing co-operatives give people a stake and a say in their own community and homes. Families need greater protection if they are not to see the homes that they have helped to plan snatched away from under them. That is why we need a right-to-co-operate Bill. Co-operatives are about the most important form of home rule. They enable us to decentralise power and ownership in the most radical way possible. They are worthy of full support from the House. In the spirit of Christmas, which is of such special significance to the homeless and the badly housed, I hope that the Minister will be able to give me the assurances that I have sought.