Aberdeen Council suspended its tenants' Right to Buy in a bid to ease the shortage of affordable housing in the City. The request to apply pressured area status to 35 letting areas was accepted by Ministers. The decision will allow the Council to retain homes for rent to people on low incomes in areas facing social housing shortages.
Aberdeen is the eighth Scottish council to successfully apply to use the pressured area mechanism. In the interest of local flexibility in the operation of Right to Buy, other councils are being encouraged to consider whether this approach could be used as a response to particular pressures within their areas.
Housing minister, Yvette Cooper, emphatically stated that there will be no 'fourth option' of direct investment for Camden Council to bring council homes up to a decent standard.
She made her latest statement in a letter to the Council's leader, Councillor Keith Moffitt, which followed her meeting with senior councillors and officers in June. In her letter she says all councils must either opt to transfer homes out of council control or deliver decent homes from the resources they have available.
The Housing Minister also highlighted that the Housing Green Paper, published in July, has a focus on delivering more new affordable housing. She states the plans for increasing resources for new social housing mean no extra resources for councils to deliver decent homes. However, councils will still be expected to deliver decent homes for all tenants.
Camden has faced a housing cash shortfall since 2003 when the Government withdrew £283 million for repairs. This followed council tenants' rejection of a transfer of management of their homes to an ALMO.
The Council agreed a new plan to plug the current £242 million shortfall needed to pay for essential repairs and maintenance to their homes in May this year. This includes working with tenants on estates with complex repairs and structural problems to secure the necessary funding, selling a tiny proportion of homes to raise much needed cash and scaling down some existing refurbishment plans.
The Council will be writing to all council tenants and leaseholders to explain its plans for improving their homes and to seek their views formally. The Council will then develop a final detailed plan for improving council homes for submission to central government in December 2007.
Wigan and Leigh Housing, which manages Wigan Council's 23,000 homes, drew up ambitious plans to expand its social role by offering jobs and training to young people living in some of the Borough's most disadvantaged areas.
The move reflects a policy of making a more direct contribution towards tackling deprivation, which is at its most concentrated on council estates.
New figures show that all but two of the 32 most deprived areas in the Borough are on council estates. Compared to the Borough average, fewer residents have full time jobs, more young people leave school at 16 and life expectancy is lower.
The new plan was approved at a Board meeting. Drawn up by Wigan and Leigh Housing chief executive, Ashley Crumbley, it proposes that the company work in partnership with two schools, Pembec in Norley Hall and Hesketh Fletcher in Atherton, on a scheme dubbed pathways into training and employment.
It will provide a mixture of vocational qualifications, training and work experience for a number of Year 10 and 11 pupils at the two schools, plus up to two years employment for more than twenty apprentices.
Wigan and Leigh Housing will host an annual "Apprentice of the Year" ceremony, with the winner being offered a bursary for further education. The scheme also includes recruitment to higher education through a university bursary scheme and graduate trainee opportunities.
Altogether up to 30 people from council estates will get help at any one time, and the company says it will invest £186,000 over the next three years in making the scheme a success.
As well as the two schools, Wigan and Leigh Housing will be working in partnership with the Connexions service, Job Centre Plus and Wigan and Leigh College to deliver the project.