Housing

Housing workers made ill by management

Housing repair workers in Manchester suffer from high levels of mental ill-health and stress, a survey has revealed. The survey was conducted by Unite the union as workers go on strike again over pay differentials within the workforce which leads to some workers being paid up to £3,500 less than others for doing the same work. The survey found that 37% of workers suffer from either depression or anxiety, 89% of those believed that work had contributed to their illness. 91% were suffering with stress, and 98% believed work had contributed to their stress. 92% said Mears′ management didn′t take...

Labour campaigns to make homes safe

Labour launched a “Make Homes Safer” campaign on the 9 November to pressure the government to put aside money for urgent repairs to old buildings in the autumn budget. The campaign calls for central government to set aside money for local councils to retrofit sprinklers and other safety systems to their housing. In his speech launching the campaign Jeremy Corbyn said: “The evidence is clear: where sprinkler systems have already been fitted, injuries sustained from fires have been cut by approximately 80 per cent and deaths from fires have almost been eliminated entirely.” In his speech Corbyn...

Grenfell: the fight goes on

The Metropolitan Police have confirmed the final death toll of the Grenfell Tower fire is 71 people. Fatalities include one family of six, and at least three families of five, and ranged in ages from a stillborn baby to an 84 year-old woman. The pattern of deaths exposes inadequacies of social housing — housing the elderly high up in tower blocks with inadequate escape routes, and large families in small flats. Rumours that the real death toll is higher still persist. While this is extremely unlikely, it is understandable that many distrust the authorities. It is also true that many residents...

Universal Credit: force Tories to back down!

In the end, just one Tory MP, Sarah Wollaston, the Chair of the Health Select Committee who has rebelled on a number of issues in the past, including Europe and Syria, defied the whips and voted with Labour when it came to the motion put down for an Opposition Day debate in the House of Commons calling upon the Government to pause the roll-out across the countryof its controversial new benefit Universal Credit, rather than abstaining as she and her colleagues had been instructed to do by them, but despite ministers pointing out the non-binding nature of the 299-0 result, political problems for...

Roll back Universal Credit roll-out

The Government is coming under pressure to halt the roll-out of Universal Credit, the new benefit which is replacing six existing ones: Jobseekers' Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance, Housing Benefit, Working Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit and Income Support. Created by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government as part of the Welfare Reform Act in 2012, Universal Credit was launched in 2013 as a pilot in a single area, the former textile town of Ashton-under-Lyne just to the east of Manchester, and has since been extended across the country, with full implementation for new...

£54 billion for private landlords

Private landlords have become the dominant force in housing in Britain, raking in £54 billion in rent in the year June 2016 to June 2017, while the interest paid by house-buyers to banks and financiers went down to £27 billion. Almost half the rent payments are made by younger people, and the slice of household income spent on housing has trebled over the past 50 years. Young people pay higher rents for smaller, less secure rented flats and houses, and have longer commutes, than in the 1960s. Meanwhile some better-off older people are doing well. Into the 1990s households paying off their...

Grenfell inquiry begins

The inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire opened on Friday 15 September. Those affected have little confidence that it will yield justice. The inquiry will not examine the wider social and political context of the fire, including social housing, and was criticised by Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack as being a “mighty kick of some really fundamental issues into some very long grass”. Three months after the fire, only two families have moved into permanent homes. Around 150 are still staying in hotels. Many have, understandably, turned down offers of temporary accommodation to...

Grenfell’s forgotten victims

Survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire who were in the UK illegally have been told they will only get 12 months limited leave to remain by the Home Office. In a year’s time people could be forcibly deported. This, despite an appeal from the police just two weeks ago for people to come forward with information about those who were living in the tower, and for survivors to come forward to receive support, where the police claimed that immigration status would not be a problem. It is now very likely that people with concerns over their immigration status will not come forward. Labour Shadow Home...

Grenfell: the powerful are still not listening

So far all 95 tower blocks which have had their cladding tested since the fire at Grenfell in Kensington, west London, have failed fire safety standards. These buildings are potentially as dangerous for their tenants as Grenfell was. Many hundreds of buildings are still to be tested. Tenants have been evacuated from tower blocks in Camden while cladding is removed; Sheffield council is removing cladding and says it cannot afford to re-clad buildings. Cladding is being removed from tower blocks in Brent, Hounslow, Lambeth, Manchester, Islington, Doncaster, Merseyside, Oxford, Plymouth...

Grenfell Fire: Never Again!

This is a joint blog post from Tubeworker and Off The Rails.


The working-class people killed in the Grenfell Fire were killed because they were working-class. They were killed for being working-class — and, many of them, for being people of colour, and/or from migrant backgrounds — and not being...

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