"promises of home improvements in Glasgow are turning into dust"

Shocking new revelations revealed yesterday show that pre-transfer promises of home improvements in Glasgow are turning into dust.

The new landlord plans to spend less than a third than other Glasgow Housing Association Ltd's spend, on its homes. Please have a look at the attached article (pasted below). What is also notable about the article is that it is from the Glasgow Evening Times, this paper had strongly advocated transfer but it seems that the pressure of failed promises have forced it to change its view on transfer. Let us learn from the failures in Glasgow Vote No To Privatisation And make sure all your friends and neighbours Vote No Thousands lose out in city housing upgrade THE dreams of tens of thousands of former council house tenants in Glasgow have been dashed.

Housing bosses have told them they cannot afford to bring their homes up to the standard enjoyed by the city's traditional housing associations. Glasgow Housing Association has admitted it cannot match the spending of the city's smaller social landlords.

Bosses say they have only £22,000 to spend on each home, compared with the £70,000-£75,000 available to traditional community housing associations. GHA is spending £1.3billion over 11 years to improve the stock it took over from the city council three years ago.

But GHA chairwoman Sandra Forsythe said: "GHA estimates the gap between the investment and development finances in our business plan and those in other housing associations is at least £1.5bn based on conservative estimates." Her words will be of no comfort to the Glaswegians who expected the housing stock transfer to deliver vastly-improved homes.

Last month the Evening Times told of sisters-in-law, Angie and Allison Palmer. Both are on benefits but their lifestyles are very different. Allison lives in a new two-storey home with front and back doors she rents from Blairtummock Housing Association.

Angie lives in a GHA slum tenement – its close daubed with graffiti – with her five sons sleeping in just one room. Cynics call this Glasgow's housing lottery. Asked by the Evening Times whether GHA could close the gap between its homes and those of other housing associations, Mrs Forsythe said: "No. GHA is funded quite differently to other transfer models.

"Under the traditional model, housing associations are funded on an average of £70,000-£75,000 a unit, based largely on replacement and renewal of stock. "When tenants voted for stock transfer it was clear GHA would be funded on an average of £22,000 a unit, based largely on refurbishment of existing stock. "That's still enough to deliver major improvements to housing but not in the same league as the smaller housing associations."

Ms Forsythe also raised the spectre of a different GHA in the future. Answering 20 questions we put to her, she hinted the planned break-up of GHA could be very different from that originally thought.

GHA is made up of 64 tenant-led local housing organisations, designed to become fully-fledged housing associations in their own right through a process known as second-stage transfers.

Ms Forsythe said second-stage transfers would not be deliverable for 64 LHOs. She said: "We believe it is possible, within current financial parameters, to transfer stock to a smaller number of organisations."

Ms Forsythe denied pilot projects for second-stage transfers had stalled. But more than 18 months after pilot negotiations began, GHA and its own LHOs are no nearer to agreeing a price for their stock.

A Scottish Executive spokesman said: "We do not recognise these numbers. The Glasgow stock transfer package of £1.7billion covers bringing existing homes up to standard and allowing thousands of new homes to be built."

Tenants need home truths about the GHA

REVELATIONS that Glasgow Housing Association lacks the £1,5billion required to bring the city's former council homes up to the same standard as those of other social landlords are deeply disturbing. When Glasgow tenants voted for transfer they did so believing they could look forward to the end of the city's slums and a new era of modern, aspirational homes.Theirs was the right decision - and the only viable escape from the decades of chronic underfunding and decay endured under cash-strapped municipal landlords. Yet that dream, it seems, can never be fully realised.

With a woefully-inadequate budgetary allowance of just £22,000 per home, GHA has no hope of reaching the standards achieved by other Scottish housing associations - who enjoy state support of up to £75,000 per home.There is no doubt that the consequence of this shortfall is dire. Far from delivering new homes and communities of the quality achieved by housing associations such as Queen's Cross, GHA will never have the funds to resolve the city's desperate social housing problem.In the GHA's defence, its refurbishment programme already has made a welcome difference to many lives.

The installation of new doors, windows and kitchens, however, can only go so far and GHA simply does not have the capital for the radical building and renewal programme Glasgow actually needs.But as Europe's biggest social housing stock transfer project prepares to move to the next stage of its evolution, serious questions must be asked - and answered - as to why it finds itself in this iniquitous and damaging position.The money men, of course, will claim the figures have always been there for all to see.Tenants, however, have every right to ask why the politicians who created, then sold them this transfer model, did so without explaining the full consequences.

Ultimately, only one group of people can sort out the sorry financial mess that is now the GHA - and those are its architects, the Scottish Executive.And if Scotland's politicians are to pay more than lip service to the social renaissance Glasgow needs to end its appalling deprivation, then they must give the GHA cash for bricks, not just straw.