Letters to the Editor: Facing up to their responsibilities.
In your article '"Compensation" for councils in West Hampstead sell off' (Inside housing, 16 Aug), you quote a Housing Corporation spokesperson as saying that the Corporation's goal was for no net loss of affordable housing.
Very commendable, I'm sure, but I would rather she stressed that no tenants would suffer as a consequence of the regulator's regulation.
Back in the early nineties, we received rent increases of forty to fifty percent, and this was put down to the need to provide proper housing when the borough came to take back the buildings. We agreed, seeing this as a sort of pension fund.
Now that this has been torn to bits, tenants have a right to expect those in charge to make good.
Baroness Dean is reported to have said recently that the corporation will be around for many years. Apart from the National Audit Office, who knows? Maybe it will. Pigs may fly.
We all remember the Royal Navy frigate which recently ran aground near Australia. The captain immediately put his hand up, and is likely to face a court martial and the sack. Maybe he could be recruited to teach social housing bosses the arts of accepting responsibility, transparency and effective action.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Rutherford,
Chair, WHHA Tenants Association (in exile)