Andy Burnham lives up to the definition of politic as being cunning, sly and underhand and he is seeking to deceive by spinning a wicked web of deceit with his opinion piece in the Guardian today. He asserts:
Today I will set out a plan to solve the housing crisis in Greater Manchester within a decade which could form the basis of this new approach. It will involve building a new generation of council homes in all 10 boroughs and at least 10,000 within this mayoral term.
A new generation of “council homes” does NOT mean council housing; it means housing owned by a council-owned private landlord company. You can’t reinvent council housing where there is no council housing or council housing department
4 of the 10 local authorities in the Greater Manchester Combined Authority he oversees have no council housing at all – Burnley, Rochdale, Tameside and Trafford – so they cannot build or develop council housing but can only set up the sham construct called a Local Housing Company (LHC) and a construct which has failed wherever it has been tried.
Burnham only has to look at the end of the M62 to see its LHC – Liverpool Foundation Homes – which went bust with a £1m debt on a £0.3m turnover and led to central government dissolving the council and imposing its own placemen to run the council. He could also look to numerous London boroughs who went down this LHC route and which have all failed too!
The definition of a LHC below is from the 2018 Social Housing Green Paper which strongly steered all local councils to set up their own private landlord companies giving the 2010 legislation which allowed them a turbo boost.
LHCs are a private landlord company owned by councils so (a) they cannot operate secure tenancies but can only use assured shorthold tenancies like other private landlords which will still contain no fault eviction practises; and (b) they do not charge the social rent level of rent so they are not affordable and they can and often do charge full market rent.
There are other more nuanced deceits in this Andy BurnSHAM piece:
To raise standards, we will bring in a new good landlord charter and give our residents in rented accommodation the right to request a property check. We will take tougher enforcement against landlords who rent out unfit and unsafe homes, including making much greater use of compulsory purchase powers.
That seemingly good intention is deliberately vague and it can ONLY apply to private landlords but not to council landlords. A council cannot take enforcement action against itself and his Greater Manchester Combined Authority cannot and will not take enforcement action against any of its 6 local councils who have council housing and will definitely not compulsory purchase their properties as GMCA does not and will never be given the legal powers to do so!
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive (Sir Walter Scott 1808) …. and Andy Burnham2024!
Speye Joe 