Winchester TACT lobby Gordon Brown for fair treatment
Winchester tenant group TACT has written to the new Prime Minister lobbying for fair treatment of council house tenants.
David Cruden and Alan Rickman, the Chairs of TACT (Tenants and Council Together) in Winchester have appealed to Gordon Brown to listen to their concerns. They stressed that TACT members want to continue renting their homes and want to keep Winchester City Council as their landlord.
They stressed that despite the recognised need for more affordable housing, and the clear role housing associations will play in this, the Government should continue to invest and support council houses as well.
In the letter they said: “Housing for our children and grand children is of vital concern to us, if they are to have any sort of future. We put our trust in your hands please do not let us down. For the first time in a long while, we begin to feel some one actually cares.”
TACT members previously wrote to Tony Blair, regarding the negative subsidy taken from the Council’s Housing Revenue Account each year of more than £7million. They say that the money paid in rent should all go to maintaining and improving homes in Winchester, as well as the provision of new council homes.
An extract from the recent letter to Gordon Brown reads: “Please allow us the right to have the money we pay in rent to go to our own homes in Winchester, and let us stay with our council as landlord. We have made it clear that this is our wish, when the last Housing Options took place.
“TACT know it has to be gone through again. Money down the drain. As tenants we will not change our minds, tenants tell us so at our regular meetings.”