... to feel angry about single mother of 11 getting new house built for her!!

Bring back workhouses and almshouses, eh, Frank?

So if they can't afford to buy, Frank they should sleep under a hedge?

Now I am sure that you are having us on. No-one is so blinkered that they think everyone has the money to buy a house - or relatives who will leave them one in their will - or can get a mortgage to buy now pay later.

Given the great shortage of council houses, is it not time for those who have their rents subsidised by taxpayers be means-tested so that only those who genuinely cannot afford private accommodation or a mortgage are given a council house. An acquaintance once told me that she and her husband were council tenants and although they could have afforded a mortgage, they preferred to spend their money on holidays, ran 2 cars and had a caravan and if they were paying a mortgage they wouldn't be able to continue to afford these things!

Absent that one might not have been me actually! Mine was more along the lines of "do we have any posters with less exalted careers"?

There should be more decent social housing. Was wrong to sell off council houses.

That's true and the wrong was compounded by not allowing local authorities to use the receipts from sale of council houses to provide new housing.

Not typical social housing but its been a council house as long as I can remember. It's the oldest dated house in Liverpool (1615).its on Flickr I think. Or google Tue Brook house West Derby Road Liverpool. If they built all houses like that...And no I only remember it from about the fifties

They went to knock one down on westbromwich that had been used as a doss house! My grandfather had always said that it was a very old house. No one believed him?
As they pulled off the layer of brick, lath and plaster with black carved beams was revealed.
It turned out to be an early moated manor house complete with chapel and solar. It's now been restored and was being run as a restaurant when I left.
I hop it's still there!

Just checked it is. Built around1200 oldest bit now about 1300 it's being restored by Sandwell council.
I urge you to google it. It's a lovely building. My oh and I did some of our courting there.

Everyone clamoured to but their council houes , if they could not afford the relatives did !

Not much point in continuing this discussion as all the statistics have been given and possibly new posters do not bother reading the whole thread.

What I feel is wrong about the council-house sell-off is that they are sold at a heavily discounted price to the sitting tenant, then often they appear on sale a while later at the full market price. The scheme is abused and treated by some as little more than a get-rich-quick opportunity. Surely, with a little thought, a scheme could have been devised whereby if the owner wanted to sell subsequently, the house had to be offered back to the council who could refund the purchase price, plus an amount, pro-rata, according to how many years the house had been privately-owned. The house could then be offered, once again cheaply, to someone who cannot afford the full market price for a home of their own.

Presumably you will be off line now greatnan

No, Nonu, I have just got up, as it is 8.45 a.m. here!
Yes, I do think there could have been a clause in the council house sale agreement to say that if it was sold within, say, three years, any profit over and above normal inflation should be repaid to the council. I thought the whole thing was a terrible idea, dreamed up by the egregious criminal Shirley Porter to gerrymander the votes in her neck of the woods. She thought , possibly rightly, that people allowed to buy their council house would vote Tory.

An interesting question someone asked elsewhere. Should she be able to stay in the house once all children have left home?

Presumably with the new 'bedroom tax' she won't be able to afford to live there.

Not if the spare room bill goes through - she'd need a really good job!

The house could be converted into studio flats.

greatnan , I thought you said there was not much point in continuing this discussion ?

Anyway I am off to enjoy my vegetable curry , I have prepared for my husband and I

Nonu - shall I let you know next time I decide to post? The sale of council houses was introduced and it is something I feel strongly about.

The sale of Council houses was not necessarily a bad idea, as it allowed some mixing of communities. What was totally wrong was to pocket the money and NOT build more suitable social housing.

But what do we do NOW. Those houses are sold, and some have made huge profits, and more have not been built.... but where do we go from here NOW. We can't keep saying that it was wrong (even if it was) and refuse to try and find solutions for the future, somehow, in the fairest way.

And we can't keep saying that because the '*ankers' sold us down the river- we can now refuse to ever look at solutions for ever- because they were greedy, and because their misuse of funds, etc, was wrong. Can we use this forever to say that any amount of abuse at the other end of the scale is acceptable and we should close a blind eye. Yes, tax evasion and greed at one end of the scale is much worse, but it is absolutely no excuse for saying abuse and fraud at the other end is therefore acceptable. We need to tackle BOTH - and stop this left/right ping-pong ball politics which have been ruining this beautiful country for decades.

Agreed too that the gutter press is rushing to expose rare and extreme cases to manipulate people's opinions and feelings. Totally.

I was incensed at the time that the income from the sake of council houses and flats couldn't be used to build more and the 'unintended consequences' were obvious then. Granjura's right, we are now stuck with the outcome, the development of a large private renting market quite a lot of which is supported out of the public purse through housing benefit, reduction in affordable housing and not enough houses where the jobs are. All that is true and possibly irreparable. What we need is a solution which I don't think the Budget offered. Allowing a reduction in VAT for refurbishments, not just for new build, might help a bit. Stopping developers from sitting on sites for years until they can build at maximum profit might also help, and preventing developers from buying land or property, getting planning permission and then selling on at a profit without any building taking place. This property speculation can lead to months or even years of applying for planning permissions by different owners, sometimes blighting sales of nearby property because of the uncertainty. Also, if central government can decide to purchase a huge amount of land and property for major works like HS2, surely local councils could buy the many neglected or dilapidated empty buildings around the country?

york I was lambasted for saying that as well. Seems like newer posters can say just the same things I did but are not castigated as I was. Now I know it is personal. How sad certain people are.

Can we state absolutely categorically so that there is no longer any room for argument that NOBODY on this forum advocates or condones abuse of the benefits system. The only point many of us made is that it is not a huge problem in the general scheme of things and it is wrong to pillory or demonise all benefits claimants because there are some obvious abusers. We have been given the statistics - I don't know why people continue to ignore them, unless they fit their own agenda.

I have suggested a solution to the sale of council houses - do not allow any profit other than that due to normal inflation if the house is resold within, say, three years. That should put off the chancers.

I am not especially opposed to means testing of council house tenants, except that adult children tend to come and go, so there would need to be some system of keeping the figures up to date.

Agreed!