A Bit About Affordable Housing

Far be it from us to report on the competition, but Newham Voices have recently covered the appalling state of Newham Housing Repairs. 

Quoting a report to Scrutiny, they note that tenants will often have to wait an average of 27 minutes on the phone. It said that 28% of calls were abandoned. No wonder. This is down from an average of 40 minutes waiting and 37% calls abandoned in February. (Not sure that we would want to boast about that.)

There is an option to report repairs on -line, but according to Cllr Hossain “repairs don’t get done.”

While thinking about housing…

Readers will recall that Newham scored the lowest possible score from the Housing Regulator for social housing. In addition, they found that 20% of Newham’s homes did not meet the Decent Homes Standard; some 9000 fire-safety remedial works were overdue, some by over a year; and 40% of Newham tenancies had not had an electrical safety check for 11 years!

We have come to expect that councils who are failing in their responsibilities will throw money at a problem in order to at least give the impression of activity.

We took a trawl through recent cabinet agendas to discover that there is a report on Affordable Homes for Newham (at page 443).

We learn that Mayor Fiaz is continuing her commendable desire to build more affordable homes. Unfortunately, it seems that she is not so keen on controlling the costs. The cabinet are being asked to find another £16m for the costs of already agreed plans with a further £6m for contingencies.

Whoever replaces Mayor Fiaz in 2026, he or she (or ‘them’-in the unlikely event that the Greens win) will have an unenviable task of balancing a budget when the council has run out of money.

Is it too cynical to suggest that Fiaz is spending to gloss-up her own record whilst having no regard to the person who will have to pick up the bill after she goes?