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Curo Housing tenants owe staggering debts of £176million

Tenants Against The Cuts | 27.11.2012 08:24 | Social Struggles | South Coast | World

Curo Group considers selling off Somer Community Housing Trust assetts to cover spiralling debts. Tenants demand the housing stock be transferred back ASAP into the ownership and control of B&NES Council.

Dear Mr da Cunha,

Since April 1999 Somer Community Housing Trust (SCHT) tenants have paid £90million plus to the banks in interest charges on the original £79million bank loan used by SCHT to purchase B&NES Councils 12000 council houses and flats with not one penny of the actual bank loan paid back to date.

Since April 2012 CURO GROUP debt stands at a staggering £176million which has to be repaid with interest by SCHT tenants over the next twenty years.

Can you confirm if the CURO GROUP’s recent proposals to sell-off the 600 SCHT Georgian properties on the open market, for private rental, as holiday lets etc., is seen by it and its greedy grasping bankers as an effective way of averting potential bankruptcy ?

If so it only serves to highlight how morally bankrupt the self-appointed CURO GROUP board members and B&NES Councils elected members really are as this proposed asset stripping can only lead to a further dramatic increase in the number of people on the Council’s housing waiting list.

Now should be the time for elected members to bite the bullet and admit their business model for SCHT is unsustainable and begin to make urgent plans to bring the housing stock back into the ownership and control of B&NES Council. In the meantime the Council should use its class voting rights to put an immediate stop to these asset stripping proposals.

Can you confirm if you would be happy to become B&NES Council’s new Director of Housing although admittedly you would have to expect a substantial pay cut !

Tenants Against The Cuts