'There is merger mania just now that is being fuelled by the Housing Corporation saying future development cash will be concentrated on fewer and fewer associations.' -- Derek Joseph, Managing Director, Tribal HCH

'The small local housing association we're told will do such a good job of running your estate, very rapidly becomes part of a much larger regional and national housing association where you have no say whatsoever. So if you stay with the council you can choose at elections, at regular intervals – it’s called democracy – to change your landlord. If you privatise that’s it, it’s a one way street.' -- Paul Holmes MP

Council house sell-off, together with the widely discredited Pathfinder programme, are two of the projects that were being pushed by John Prescott and ODPM, now being promoted with religious zeal by Ruth Kelly and her Orwellian named Communities Department.

Once privatised, rents go up, service charges go up even faster, and faster still are the fat cat salaries of the people at the top. Repairs and refurbishments become virtually non-existent and as does tenant representation.

According to the National Audit Office, it costs £1300 more per home to improve homes post-privatisation than if they had remained under council control.

Privatised tenants have less secure tenancies, it is easier to evict them.

RSLs and housing associations are building houses for sale. The chief inspector of housing for the Audit Commission has said too many 'chase the customers they haven't got and neglect the ones they have got.'

RSLs and housing associations are acquiring massive land banks, forcing property prices up for everyone. London and Quadrant is the sector's biggest developer. Last year it announced plans to more than double its land bank from £60 million to £150 million.

RSLs and housing associations have no interest in the local community. London and Quadrant, the fourth largest RSL, plans to close six sheltered homes in Bexley.

RSLs and housing associations are amassing massive surpluses, most of it direct from the public purse.

Tenants have less say. It is the management who dictate who if anyone will represent the tenants. In Sunderland, for example, the tenants themselves are no longer allowed to elect their own representatives, they are handpicked by the management.

Tenants who speak out are victimised.

Peter Sandy, a Pavilion tenant, was threatened with an Asbo and eviction from his home when he spoke out against Pavilion and the treatment of its tenants. Roger P Murphy has suffered similar treatment at the hands of Dominion Housing Group (formerly Acton Housing Association) for daring to criticise their piss poor performance and treatment of tenants.

Housing Associations and RSLs (registered social landlords), despite their friendly sounding names, are in all but name, private corporations, in practice modern-day Rachman landlords.

Although private landlords in all but name, their tenants have less protection under the Housing Act 2004 than their fellow tenants in the private sector. They will not, for example, be protected by the deposit scheme.

Driven by the industry regulator, the Housing Corporation, merger megalomania is now the name of the game. According to Inside Housing there has been 100 full scale mergers and 70 acquisitions within the last two years. [Inside Housing, 10 February 2006]

The larger the grouping, the more remote the management, less the accountability. Tenants have no say in these takeovers and mergers, are not consulted.

Aldershot-based Pavilion was a poorly performing housing association. It was taken over last year (officially it was called a merger) by Eastleigh-based Atlantic to form First Wessex Group. During a brief honeymoon period, tenants saw some improvements, it is now as bad as it was prior to the takeover. First Wessex is now proposing to takeover Portsmouth Housing Association.

Thames Valley Housing and Richmond Housing Partnership are in merger talks. The combined group would be dominant in West London and the South East.

It does not have to be, tenants who are still council tenants should say no. If not, it will be the last chance you will have to have a say in the future of your own home. A spanner has been thrown in the works of Pathfinder by a successful legal challenge.

In the face of growing public opposition, neon-Labour is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain these flawed housing policies. For the third successive year, the neo-Labour Party leadership was defeated at the Party conference when their policy on privatisation of council housing was put to the vote.

What has happened in Germany should sound alarm bells as to what could happen in the UK. Public housing, having been sold off, has subsequently been acquired as a speculative investment by venture capital flowing from the City of London. The same could happen to privatised social housing in the UK.

Related topics and further reading

Fred Harrison, Boom Bust: House Prices, Banking and the Depression of 2010, Shepheard-Walwyn, 2005

Mike Lane, The Regeneration Game, 2006 {DVD}

Austin Mitchell, Labour conference backs direct investment third year in a row, Defend Council Housing newspaper, October/November 2006

Sebastian Mueller, Imapacts of Privatisation, September 2006 {briefing paper for London housing conference}

Roger P Murphy, Lies Damn Lies, and Dominion Housing Group, Indymedia UK, 3 October 2006
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/352539.html

Nooks and Corners, Private Eye, 13-26 October 2006

Keith Parkins, Curitiba – Designing a sustainable city, April 2006
 http://www.heureka.clara.net/gaia/curitiba.htm

Keith Parkins, First Wessex plan takeover of Portsmouth housing, Indymedia UK, 12 September 2006
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/09/350606.html

Keith Parkins, Liverpool resident halts Pathfinder programme, Indymedia UK, 27 September 2006
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/09/351960.html

Keith Parkins, London Social Forum – housing and land rights conference, Indymedia UK, 2 October 2006
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/352437.html?c=on

Keith Parkins, M3 Landlord Link Forum, Indymedia UK, 16 October 2006
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/353666.html

Keith Parkins, Pathfinder hits the buffer, Indymedia UK, 17 October 2006
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/353777.html