Star date: 4th February 2015 

HOUSING ALLOCATION CONSULTATION TURNS OUT TO BE A SHAM

When Salford Council, led by ruling Labour Party councillors, wanted to change its Housing Allocations policy it ran a consultation which originally ended on 25th January. However, an informed source tells the Salford Star that almost the next day the Labour Party group met and passed the original policy `without changing a comma', despite protests from some councillors.

The controversial Housing Allocation policy proposal includes putting families back in towerblocks and kicking people off the housing waiting list via penalties.

Full details here...

Salford Council is proposing to change its Housing Allocation policy and ran a consultation with Salford residents to see what they thought. It asked for people's views on things like introducing an option to "re-house families in multi-storey blocks" and introducing penalties for "non-bidding" and "refusal" (see previous Salford Star article for full details – click here).

Housing associations, councillors and residents all responded to the consultation but their views, it appears, have been put straight into the bin. Almost the day after the original consultation had ended on 25th January, the Salford Labour Group of councillors met to decide policy – which inevitably will be passed at Council given the huge Labour Party majority.

According to an informed source, the Labour Group agreed to adopt the original proposal, despite protests from some Labour councillors, without any of the consultation responses included.

"They had a `working group' looking at the proposal which had already made up their mind to accept it" says the source "So the policy has already been decided, even though the consultation had only finished the day before. Housing Mayor Gena Merrett told councillors that they had been looking at the comments all the way through but the document has been passed without changing a comma."

It states on the Council website that "Salford City Council is currently conducting a review of its allocations policy and would welcome the views of local residents and key stakeholders, in order to help inform this..."

Yet, for all intents and purposes the consultation appears to be a sham – the Labour Party Group has already agreed its policy...

Even more strange is that, after the Labour Group meeting, the consultation on the housing policy was extended until March 8th – so that more views can be heard!

See the Consultation - click here

• City West Housing has, we understand, responded to the consultation and the Salford Star asked for its opinion on its views apparently being binned. We are awaiting a response...