Labour urged to act on Green Paper plans

Their joint letter to the deputy prime minister in response to the housing Green Paper is intended to put considerable weight behind their calls for new resources to be properly targeted and to ensure that high quality, well designed housing is built in the right places.

The letter states the Queen's Speech should "deliver on the outstanding commitments on homelessness and houses in multiple occupation and implement as many of the other really positive proposals in the Green Paper as possible."

Their response criticises proposals on housing benefit for not going far enough and calls for sufficient resources to ensure the benefit is administered to agreed standards through partnerships between local and central government.

The four also express "concern" at linking benefits to conditions and standards of behaviour.

Proposals to increase the numbers of large scale voluntary transfers are welcomed as are proposals to set up arms length housing management companies.

All agree rents should be "affordable, coherent and sustainable" but opinions differ over rent restructuring proposals in the Green Paper.

In a separate letter to housing minister Nick Raynsford detailing the federation's response to the Green Paper, chief executive Jim Coulter questions the ten year period set out for reform, describing it as "untenable."

He also warns DETR not to be dictatorial over the reforms, and calls for rent reform to be led by RSLs and council landlords "within a clear affordability framework". He writes: "A centrally determined, heavily regulated approach will simply not work."

The federation is calling for a new option to restructure rents based on an 80:20 ratio of earnings to capital values, which was backed by its National Council last week (Housing Today, 6 July).

Coulter writes: "Not every RSL has expressed itself elegantly about the impact of the housing Green Paper rent options. However that does not mean the concerns expressed are unreal or unnecessarily exagerated."