Frank's Blog

THREE aspects of local housing association policy makes many of you angry. The first is how houses are allocated.  Many of you feel that constituents who don’t play by the rules, get the best housing when it becomes available. The Bill I introduced on Tuesday will ensure that those tenants get housed, but only after those families who, work hard, and whose children do not cause a problem, have selected the houses they would like. Complaint number two centres on...

LAST week I published a pamphlet on extending the right to buy to housing association tenants. How would that policy work out in Birkenhead? When I first came to Birkenhead, housing was the number one issue at my surgeries. That issue then disappeared. Now it is back with a vengeance. Why? Part of the answer is that tenants now want better accommodation. Wirral Council responded by pulling down many of its properties, thereby cutting supply. Another reason was that much of the best...