Telford & Wrekin Council Watch - The Sale of Manor Heights

The Sale of Manor Heights

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Written by John Franklyn

Tuesday, 19 February 2008

The Sale of Manor Heights

After several years of redundancy, Manor Heights has been for sold to a private contractor.

Whilst I am sure the buyer will be rubbing their hands together at the thought of some substantial profit and will probably use the rather misleading heading of ‘affordable’ homes to promote there sales.

The sale of Manor Heights now sees the Social Housing in Telford and Wrekin approximately 60 homes short. With awaiting list that has exceeded 9000 and will be heading towards 10,000 they are much needed.

It is said that the Wrekin Housing Trust have a policy of sale and replacement,

At the recent question time and the podcast is still available

Andrew Eade said the policy is

Sell one and replace with two others.

In the early days of TCW Richard Overton said

Sell one and replace with four, this was later echoed by MP David Wright.

One thing is for certain, the sales are far outstripping the replacements and lagging far behind the needs of the borough.

However, after the sale of Manor Heights, we should now be seeing the replacements to anything from 120 – 240 social houses.

I will express my concern that properties in the borough are being sold and any replacement could happen out of the borough with the council being powerless to do anything about it.

However, I will challenge the council and the Wrekin Housing Trust to come out into the open and show all interested parties, their policy, how many properties they have sold in the borough and how many they have replaced in the borough.

Can the Wrekin Housing Trust show an auditable trail between the sale of the properties in Telford and Wrekin and the replacements in Telford and Wrekin.

And now I formally challenge not only the council, elected members but also MP’s Wright and Pritchard to speak up about this extremely important borough issue.

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