Rob Shorrock

SKDC stock transfer ballot is now well and truly underway. Of course the delinquency of those running it means that we had no advance notice. They just went after Thursdays extraordinary meeting of council, and ignored the previous stated timescale given to to a full council meeting of November. But I am not suprised. Lesley at Defend Council Housing did warn me.

Turning to the 'independent tenants advisory service' Libra. I haven't really got to grips with this lot but so much is dependent on their credibility. They are used as the backstop, the defence and the argument for being secure in what we don't know; 'Libra have approved it'. aka 'trust us!!!!'

 It really is just pure pantomime. In any other business sector the notion that you can just delegate all responsibility and have things cleared by a state funded consultant is just stupendous. With Libra it is even more surreal; they are the company set up by PCAMS a consultancy that - guess what! - advises local authorities to make 'stock transfer a success'. How independent can these people really be? Not very given that the person running Libra uses a PCAMS email address. They are all part of the same contract chasing outfit. This whole charade is big bucks for these consultancies - whatever they call themselves.

 I raised a number of questions with Lisa Foulkes Head of Libra particulary around the fact that they don't seem to offer any resistance to stock transfer at all, which if they were truly independent must have happened at some point. She cannot give me the name of any tenants organisations that her company has advised to reject stock transfer. She prefers to tell me and my colleagues that we should get our information checked by the DCLG and is 'disappointed' that we are making statements that haven't been approved by the state and, in her view, are misleading. QED. The only example she raises is the contention we make that secure tenancies are less secure that assured, even if an inexperienced housing association says it will honour them: well give HA tenants the same secure tenancies if that is case! There is a difference and it is obvious in law.

On to model letters and Cllr Mike Williams. Mike guided me to become a councillor and I really appreciate that. In fact, i was instrumental in getting his nomination to go forward to sit on the shadow board of South Lincolnshire Homes. The idea at the time was that he would be able to act from the inside and that was important. It took us all by suprise that he then defected from Labour but remained part of the shadow board. We are less suprised that he is writing letters - or letters are being written in his name - to say that he is a convert to stock transfer. What took him so long? Being in that hothouse would drive an sensible person to come to stupid conclusions.

So Mike let me tell you like it is - the business plan of South Lincolnshire Homes is a fantasy, the whole of the HA sector has borrowing that is too rapid, 44 billion at the last count; 1  in 5 housing associations get into troubles and end up in supervision; there were 70 mergers last year alone and the government is highly likely to change policy on this within the next 18 months. Tell your constituents in Harrowby that, Mike and then see how they vote.

I would like to begin by telling you about a little old lady, I know, who lives up on Earlesfield. She received one of the Defend Council Housing Campaign leaflets, rang us and said. "look I still don't know how I am going to vote on this but I am so pleased you are giving the arguments against. All the glossy stuff is so one sided."

In fact, if there is one principle that tenants seem to hold in common, and a lesson that need to be learned by the council it is this: ‘Tell people the truth, the whole truth and allow genuine debate. Don't try and con us. Give us everything warts and all"

This document is packed full of good ideas but is simply a book of good ideas. It doesn't contain all the warts. It hasn't got the hard stuff that people need to make hard decisions. Disgracefully, it doesn't tell people that SLH has to borrow everything it needs on the open market; the debt owed by housing associations is at record levels set to soar to 45 billion over the next 4 years compared to 22 billion in 2003 - a trembling bubble waiting to burst.

It doesn't tell tenants that rents in stock transfer RSL's are still higher and rising. According to the governments own figures on the DCLG website, despite the 10 year convergance policy there is a growing gap between the levels of rents between housing assoc and councils and that has increased by 10% on the 2004 figure.

 It doesn't tell them that according to the NAO, 1 in 5 stock transfer housing association get in financial trouble in the first 5 years because of  business plans that are not fit for purpose and poor governance due to inexperienced board members.

It doesn't tell them that stock transfer housing associations are vulnerable to take-over, 70 mergers in 2005\2006 alone so the idea of being locally based goes out of the window. Rationalisation is the name of this game.

And above all tenants are not being told that in the end they take the risk, not the council, not the housing association but tenants - including some of the most vulnerable people in the district. They have to decide without seeing the business plan what to do.

Remember, every fairy tale has a darker meaning. We want tenants to have a choice. We want tenants to have high quality homes and services. But unlike some we recognise they are adults and we will make sure that tenants are aware of the full meaning of this story -warts and all.

One of the strangest aspects of the stock transfer process is the discussions with various people within the council about what constitutes a fact and the meaning of truth. Unfortunately, this is not a philosophical journey but a rather blunt instrument to get people to handover their homes to the untried and untested South Lincolnshire Homes, and block any dissenting voices.

The housing portfolio holder has said there is no debate - the offer document contains all the facts and truths about stock transfer, South Lincolnshire Homes and what it will do. Like some fundementalist zealot, any suggestion that the offer document may be missing some important things, such as South Lincolnshire Homes having no assets and having to borrow over £73 million pounds to get going is derided as heresy. In fact, the council has said it will 'refute' all statements that are 'not correct'.

In an internal newsletter, aimed at staff who have volunteered for this missionary work it states. "Opponents of stcok transfer are still sending out leaflets telling tenants to vote No to the transfer proposal. Many of their so called facts that they claim to give are simply untrue and the Council will continue to refute those staments that are incorrect. If members of staff encounter tenants who are misled by such information they are revised to refer tenants to the Offer Document (which contains only facts endorsed by the DCLG and the Housing Corporation."

So the arbiter of truth is the DCLG. The only thing that can be true is what the DCLG approve!!? Imagine this scene on the doorstep:

Tenant: Is it true SLH will have to borrow 73 million on the open market?

Doorknocker: No its not true, it doesn't say that in the offer document.

Tenant: So what does it say?

Doorknocker: It says SLH has a business plan that has been approved to do all the things it promises?

Tenant: So it uses the business plan to borrow?

Doorknocker: No. It has a business plan that allow it to do what it says

And so on........ad naseum.

Last night I resigned from the Grantham Local Forum. Not a major political event when viewed from the perspective of enormous and terrible events in the world but good enough to be accused of 'grandstanding to the press' by Cllr Mike Taylor (the Tory Chair of the Engagement DSP). The reason for my resignation was partly his fault.

The issue of Local Forums is basically this: are they forums controlled by the cabinet to consult on council matters or should they be forums owned and run by the public with powers to hold officers and members to account and make recommendations that have to be looked at by decision-making bodies of council?

The engagement dsp spent many months looking at a range of options, involving trips out to other councils, having presentations on schemes from other councils. All of these looking at ways in which local authorities engage their public. The reason we started this was because our Local Area Forums originally set up as a talking shop between parish, district and county councillors had mutated into an opportunity for the public to raise issues in an informalish environment. It was clear they had lost a clear sense of purpose, so the engagement dsp tasked me as chair of our democratic review working group with making recommendationd for change. This we duly did and the resulting package was approved, with some minor changes, by the engagement dsp. In fact, fact Cllr Taylor was passionately enthusiastic about the options that would be put to cabinet. This included clearly defined responsibilities and powers, a shift to focussing on the public meeting aspect and abolishing the concept of membership. We even advocated a budget a for each forum to spend.

These proposals were duly filleted by the cabinet. In fact, out of 25 seperate proposals they approved only 2. To change the name and, rather bizarrely, to introduce a roving microphone. The rather bumbling John Smith (Tory Cabinet member from Bourne) remains the Grantham forum chair. Its business as usual as far as they are concerned.

The Labour group decided that we would resign our membership of this farce. The forum does not meet the aspirations and concerns of the Grantham people and we would join the public and ask questions from there. We no longer want to be complicit in the deceit.

Ironically, Ken Linford (from the Earlesfield Tenants Compact) asked why there was no criteria for the way the meeting should be run. Duncan Kerr (CEO) said it would be a good idea if the forum came up with its own rules for how the forum should run. Which I think was our recommendation 16 that was chucked out by the cabinet!