Housing vision

Shortly after Labour came to power, I attended a seminar during which the arts minister invited questions. I asked him what had happened to the money accrued from the sale of council homes under the previous Conservative government. He could not answer me because he did not know. This struck me as absurd – how can this money just disappear into coffers without anyone either knowing or being accountable to the populace?

I happen to live in a sixties timber-framed “Quickbuild” development, originally financed by the Housing Corporation and Abbey National. The houses were initially for rent with a right to buy at “knock down” rates in the seventies. They are designed to Parker Morris standards.

Decent, affordable housing is a problem which will not go away. The Big Society, as I see it, offers no workable solutions and paradoxically threatens to make the situation worse with its paternalistic talk of giving all the “worthy” jobs to volunteers. Surely these are the very people who need paying.

To quote Barrack Obama, “we need change we can believe in”, not merely change for the sake of it. People die through lack of vision.

Bryan Perry, Lewes, East Sussex