At Tuesday’s full council meeting, Conservative Councillors asked Labour Cabinet members several questions on housing in the run-up to their housing motion. Labour’s responses ranged from the Deputy leader implying she had been unaware of the 15000 housing complaints, too Leader Cllr Ian Ward (Lab, Shard End) stating that he would answer in the fullness of the later debate. The debate on the Conservative motion became heated after Labour audibly laughed while Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group Cllr Ewan Mackey (Con, Roughley) repeated tory calls for the council to adopt Andy Street’s definition of “affordable” in the housing sector, & tackle damp as the root cause of mould. Cllr Robert Alden (Con, Erdington), Conservative Group Leader, retorted that the issue was not a laughing matter, admonishing Labour Councillors. Conservative Councillors then took the Labour Executive to task over the 15000 reports of mould and damp, and the impact this has had on peoples’ health. Notable throughout the debate was the lack of Labour Councillors defence of their Exec, with not one Labour Councillor prepared to state that they still “had confidence in the Labour Executives handling of housing”. This comes after rumours abound about the pressure put on Labour Councillors to support the leadership, open talk of confidence motions by Labour Councillors at the Community Rally to save the SSENDIAS service. The question must be asked, if Labour Councillors cant support their leadership why should residents?
Cllr Robert Alden asked Cllr Ian ward, “The housing ombudsman has repeatedly highlighted the failings of the housing service in Birmingham including issues with mould, damp and others. The recent Labour group BAME survey included the following response from an unnamed Cllr “We have to get back to basics & do things that our communities want. I have Constituents living in housing that I could not imagine me & my family living in & yet we have our priorities wrong, focusing on vanity projects”…Would the Leader of the council be willing to live in one of these properties himself?”. The Leader of the council responded by saying that there was a strategy that the council would be delivering over the coming years to address the issue. Cllr Alden followed this by pointing out that the rate of council houses meeting the “decent homes” standard under the last Conservative-led Council had been 99%. He added that within just 10 years under the current Birmingham Labour group that number has slipped to just above 60%, asking by what date could every social tenant expect to live in a “decent” home. Cllr Ward decline to answer, stating that the topic would be picked up later.
Cllr Ewan Mackey then raised the housing ombudsman’s recent reply to press comments made by the Labour Group, where he stated that it was concerning to see the problems with Birmingham’s social housing be cast as “one-offs” or “historic”. Cllr Mackey asked Deputy Leader of the Council, Cllr Brigid Jones, “…do you agree with me that the starting point for improvement has to be an honest acceptance of failures, & that it helps no one – least of all Birmingham City tenants – when the council closes its ears and pretends everything is ok?” Cllr Jones responded by saying “…It’s things I don’t know about that scare the hell out of me because I can’t fix them if I don’t know they are broken” implying that she had been unaware of the 15000 complaints of mould & the systemic failing of Birmingham’s housing.
Introducing the motion, Cllr Ken Wood (Con, Walmley & Minworth) said “Adequate and safe housing is one of the fundamentals in life. I believe that our tenants in Birmingham should be able to take pride in the house the Council has provided them with. Sadly that isn’t the case in many instances as they’ve been let down by the same Labour administration that wanted to hive them off in a stock transfer”. He continued “I know the City is capable of running housing properly. I know this because we did it before. Between 2004 & 2012 we had one of the best housing departments in the Country…for our tenants’ health & wellbeing, the administration needs to step up”.
Cllr Delany (Con, Rubery & Rednal) seconded the motion saying “It is a failure of culture & leadership. It is symptomatic of an administration that spends time and money creating a private company – Inreach- to compete with the private sector to charge market rent, but can not meet its statutory duties as a landlord”.
Cllr Mackey introduced an additional proposal making clear that the motion was intended to be taken as a vote of no confidence, during which he said “at the moment, the biggest slumlord in Birmingham is Birmingham City Council…residents need action on their houses now, they don’t want to wait…Your properties are needlessly putting strain on the NHS because people are having to go to the hospital because of the state of [your properties]. Shame on you”. He also added that offering advice which amounted to nothing more than mitigation of mould & damp was passing the buck for house maintenance to residents. This along with Cllr Mackey’s mention of Andy Street’s definition of an “affordable home” was met with laughter from the Labour benches.
Cllr Alden then said “It is truly astonishing that on a debate on mouldy housing – unsafe housing – that this council is placing tenants in, that we had Labour Councillors laughing all the way through that last speech. Shameful behaviour”. Cllr Alden then listed the number of “non-decent” homes in a variety of other councils, such as Labour ran Sandwell with 174 non-decent homes, before stating that Birmingham City Council had 22,469 non-decent homes. The percentage of decent homes in Birmingham has fallen since Labour came to power in 2012 in Birmingham. At this time the national figure of non-decent homes was around 15%, the Birmingham figure being 1% compared to Birmingham’s current figure of 29% and a national figure of 7.8%. On those figures, Cllr Alden said “that’s not a national problem, that’s a Birmingham Labour problem…the buck stops with this administration & they need to fix tenants homes now. Birmingham tenants deserve better than they have had for the last decade”.
Conservative Councillors were disappointed to lose the motion, with the Labour group amendment removing the guarantee that all social tenants would be placed in a home which meets the “decent homes standard” by 2026 and declining to commit to undertaking the housing ombudsman’s suggestions and report on this in 6 months.
Notable throughout the debate was the lack of Labour Councillors’ defence of their Exec. Throughout the debate not one Labour Councillor was prepared to state that they still had confidence in the Labour Executives’ handling of housing, repeatedly admitting that there was work needed on housing across the City. Rumours had circulated earlier in the day about the pressure put on Labour Councillors to support the leadership. Some Labour Councillors, frustrated with the state of social housing in the city, apparently considered supporting the Conservative motion, but were concerned as they already felt their wards were overlooked. Tension among the Labour group was evident after the open talk of no-confidence motions by Labour Councillors at the Community Rally to save the SENDIASS service, with one Labour Councillor suggesting that the Labour Administration’s failure on SEND was “a matter of confidence”, sentiments echoed by the multiple Labour Councillors present in the crowd. The question must be asked, if Labour Councillors can’t support their Leadership why should residents?
