Sue Sampson’s letter in last week’s Chronicle contained many factual errors which I will endeavour to correct below.Ms Sampson asserts that the old children’s Hostel at Barrowgate Road and 44 Kew bridge Road have been sold off to ‘prop up’ the Tory/ICG regime. Not so: Barrowgate Road would have required excessive amounts of money to bring it back into use, and since numbers in temporary accommodation are falling, there was no good reason to do so: it was superfluous to requirements. The money from the sale belongs to the Housing Revenue Account: it is ring-fenced for housing purposes; it could not have been used for any other service or put into the General Fund to reduce Council Tax. She also asserts that these are family sized dwellings and would have helped towards the borough’s housing crisis. However, 44 Kew Bridge Road was a part commercial, part residential property, and as such, not suitable for family accommodation: high levels of investment would to bring it back into use; the price achieved on the open market reflected this. Barrowgate Road was a children’s hostel and again not suitable as a family dwelling The money received from this and other sales has been used to bring some 40 other street properties back into use which were formerly leased to Co-op Homes prior to this administration where they fell into disrepair. Thus, more family dwellings were released as a result of this measure, benefiting more Hounslow families.Ms Sampson says: “In Duke’s Avenue, no renovation work has started… the squatters remain” but, as anyone knows, evicting squatters can be a slow process; the Keens were able to recover their house quickly because they stated that it was their family home; the Council has no such advantage and so the process is much slower. We hope to have news from Brentford County Court where an action has been lodged soon. When the squatters are ousted the properties will be refurbished and brought back use as family accommodation.Ms Sampson then says: “At Olaf Palme House Feltham there are 15 family-sized flats still boarded up”: but Olaf Palme was a temporary accommodation hostel – it will be demolished and replaced by 20 family sized homes at Elmwood Avenue. She concludes by saying ‘a report’ shows there are 386 properties sitting empty throughout Hounslow: true but the number that Ms Sampson quotes is for private properties: even so Hounslow has a very low percentage of such empty properties – across the Borough, lower than 1%. – and officers in Housing are fielding a range of schemes to bring these back into use.Councillors, or those aspiring to be Councillors, have an obligation to ensure that what they say or publish is the truth since to do otherwise would be to mislead the public. I am happy for staff in Housing to assist Ms Sampson with establishing a factual basis for any further letters she might wish to write.Sincerely,Jon HardyLead Member for Housing and Performance Improvement
Jon Hardy ● 5989d