An ongoing dispute at the BHT (Brighton Housing Trust), has seen workers sacked for refusing to sign new contracts which cut pay and conditions. In protest staff and clients of the trust will sleep out overnight on October 7.

Staff members who refused to sign the new contracts were sacked. Their internal appeals against their termination were dismissed. This follows the award of substantial pay rises for chief executives of the parent Housing Associations, Affinity Sutton and Downland Housing Association.

BHT, which has charitable status, is a Housing Association providing specialist housing and a range of services to the homeless, inadequately housed and vulnerable people. These services include legal advice (on housing, debt, welfare rights, community care and immigration), day centre for homeless, housing support services, addiction recovery and mental health services as well as housing.

In July 2009 BHT management terminated the contracts of 202 members of staff and offered a new ‘take it or leave' contract which, in some cases, reduced wages by 25%, increased hours and also reduced pensions for all workers by 50%. The CEO of Downland received a 47% pay increase bringing his annual pay to over £135, 000.  Keith Exford, CEO of Affinity Sutton earns over £260,000 a year and received a 6% pay rise in the last financial year.

Members of Unison, the public sector Union will join the clients they normally help and on the night of October 7 will sleep out overnight outside the Community Base Building, Queens Road, in a protest during a week of strikes at two BHT projects from October 5-9. They are highlighting the treatment they have received from BHT and its parent group, the third largest housing association in the UK, and will call for the reinstatement of workers and a return to the negotiating table.

Alex Knutson for Unison in Brighton said:
“We are fighting for the future of public sector housing in Brighton and on behalf of the vulnerable people we are privileged to serve.   We not only need to highlight the injustices experienced by our own worker members but to point out how vast sums of public money are being ploughed into our parent Housing Company, Affinity Sutton and its subsidiary, Downland, which are being used up in increasing layers of administration and management at the expense of front line services.   

"These unelected housing bodies are unaccountable and increasingly driven by profit. We believe their behaviour is to the detriment of thousands of vulnerable people they are supposed to house. It is a sign of the times that Housing Associations are acting like private corporations. We believe our experience is not unique and reflects a worrying trend nationally at as time of recession and repossession.”