hOMES STRIPPED FOR HEROES

TODAY`S `HEROES`

`

ARE THE

ASSET STRIPPERS

The poppies are back again as we head for November 11. Armistice Day this year, as we know, has an added memory, coming so close to the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War.

Armistice Day this year has another added memory, a memory without the horror of war. Armistice Day comes close to the centenary of the start of council house building in Britain. In Carlisle, this centenary was three years earlier with the first council houses built in Willowholme-on the present Sainsbury site- in 1911.

By the end of the war in 1918,  the cry was for homes fit for heroes-an election call made by the wartime prime minister, David Lloyd George- and council housing  on a massive scale was ordered by  his government. Council housing would change our towns for ever. 

An Act of Parliament in 1919 made housing for the first time a national responsibility. Local authorities were given the job of developing new housing where it was needed

Today, many thousands of council homes later, there is not much talk of heroes or  the responsibility of the nation to house those in need.

All that has been forgotten.

Sadly, today the talk is of stripping away that great legacy of houses built up  by generations of city councillors, and financed  with money collected in taxes from  people in the Carlisle area.

After today`s stripping away, the cash reserves of the housing associations are now bulging and housing association bosses get fat cat salaries.

Homes fit for heroes? Today`s heroes are the asset strippers.

How exactly that great legacy is being stripped away  made for a stormy meeting at Longtown-reported earlier on this blog- when the tenants of Riverside Housing Association  fiercely attacked  Riverside`s asset-stripping.

They also attacked  the  neglectful way this Liverpool property development organisation is caring for its former council houses and their tenants.

More questions followed that stormy meeting. First, questions to the man who organised the meeting, Mr Dean Butterworth, regional director of Riverside who had faced a barrage of criticism.

His questions came from the newly formed tenants` group, Longtown Action for Heat. It was a list of about a dozen questions concerning the dodgy Riverside boilers in about sixty homes  that have left their tenants freezing and fuming with no remedy in sight.

Mr Butterworth has promised answers to all the questions.

Second, questions to the man who chaired the  meeting, Councillor John Mallinson who represents Longtown on Carlisle City Council. He also faced  criticism at the meeting.

His questions came from Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation which is backing the tenants.A dozen questions  came in a letter and asked what help is forthcoming  for the freezing tenants from the two councils, Carlisle and Cumbria, and from the local councillors.

And  why the tenants had no one to turn to  two years ago when they first needed help.They were desperate for help.

And why the tenants, now coming up for their third winter without heat have still no one to turn to for help.

They have still no one to turn to for help.

Mr Mallinson has promised to address these issues.

Back to poppies and Armistice Day. That stormy meeting  was held in a building that is a legacy of the First World War, and was  built about the same time as council housing in Britain was getting underway. Longtown Memorial Hall was built in memory of the Longtown victims of that war .It is now a thriving community centre.