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Council spends £1.2m buying back property they originally sold for £190k

As Brighton & Hove City Council spends £1.2m to buy back property they sold for £190k – Greens say flogging off housing wastes public money.

Green councillors are calling for lessons to be learned on future sales of council housing stock as the Labour Council prepares to buy back a property it previously sold for £190k at a cost of £1.2m in order to meet housing demand.

The property in Queens Park ward was sold by the Council in 1999, under a set of restrictions that ensured accommodation within the buildings would be let at affordable ‘social rent’ levels.

A report to the councils Housing and New Homes Committee (Wednesday 14) revealed that the current housing association owners now wished to sell the property on the open market.

In a move to protect the supply of affordable housing in the city, the committee approved a recommendation that the Council buy the property back at a cost of £1.2m.

Demand in Brighton & Hove for social housing is high, with over 17,000 people currently on the waiting list for council homes.

Greens stress that previous decisions to sell old council properties to companies like Seaside Homes have reduced the amount of available social rented housing and have also voiced concerns over plans to increase the rent levels for the property, which make it less affordable for those on low incomes.

Cllr David Gibson
Cllr David Gibson

David Gibson, Green Councillor and Housing Spokesperson, said: “Here in Brighton and Hove we are drastically short of providing the amount of truly affordable rents and social housing the city needs. Instead of keeping existing homes and building more, Labour and Conservative governments sold off homes through the disastrous ‘right to buy’ scheme for years – over 2,000 were lost to our city this way. In 2006 Labour even tried to transfer all our council housing to a housing association.

“The Labour Council is now in a position of having to spend £1.2m buying back a property it originally sold off for £190k. But the loss made on buying back this home shows the flaws in flogging off our housing stock.

“With house prices so high and still rising, Greens say the council should be buying more housing, not selling it off. Greens support bringing housing back into council ownership but it should never have been sold in the first place. We continue to push the Labour Council to bring emergency and temporary accommodation in-house, instead of forking out millions of pounds in public money to private landlords.

“Greens will hold the council to account over the increased costs of rent planned for these new properties. We want to see the cost of rent set at ‘living rent’ levels – to ensure any new accommodation is genuinely affordable to those on low incomes. We must secure a better deal for our tenants. In the end, it’s clear that they are the ones who lose out when the council sells off properties the city desperately needs.”

Green councillors have campaigned for more genuinely affordable housing for the city and were successful in pushing the council to lower rents on new housing schemes, including the ‘Joint Venture’ with Hyde Homes. Greens have also pushed the council to double the budget available to reclaim properties sold under the ‘right to buy’ scheme.

DANCE REVIEW: Rambert @Theatre Royal

Symbiosis. Miguel Altunaga, Hannah Rudd © Stephen Wright
Symbiosis. Miguel Altunaga, Hannah Rudd © Stephen Wright

It would be fitting if I could open this piece with a statistic on how many times the Rambert has performed at The Theatre Royal or indeed how often I have seen them there but alas all I can serve up is probably the well-known nugget that the Rambert is Britain’s oldest dance company and, as such we must be grateful that the post-war decision was made to discontinue touring with traditional popular pieces but rather return to the contemporary dance roots established by the company’s founder, Marie Rambert, in 1926. This has ensured that the Rambert, always visually satisfying, has also remained relevant.

Of course, there are the dances in the company’s constantly changing and expanding repertoire that stand out, for me personally Hurricane and Rooster still resonate in the memory and the usual structuring of their programme around three pieces often means that one can dominate. Which made last night’s production at the Theatre Royal the more gratifying.

Opening with Symbiosis (choreographer: Andonis Foniadakis, composer Ilan Eshkeri) we were immediately immersed in the impressive sheer physicality of the troupe. Costumes pared down in colour and line so as not to take in anyway from this representation of the tight but fluid fit of urban existence. The dancers moving so effortlessly that, on occasion, it was difficult to determine the boundary of one from another. Rather, like watching a slide of blood beneath a microscope, the cells constantly moving and gently dividing.

After a break, it made the opening of the second piece, To Be Me (choreographer: Julie Cunningham, music and text Kate Tempest), the more dramatic in its change of style and pace. Numbers reduced to four dancers only, in bold red and black, the focus of the audience was immediately harnessed and condensed. The smaller number also allowing the opportunity to linger on the sheer audacity and lyricism of the performers. Are bodies really able to bend, elliptically shift, step and stretch with this fluid precision? Yes, because we are seeing it happening before us. The accompanying text, delivered in a hip-hop rhythm worked wonderfully well poignantly underpinning that age old human struggle, the search for identity, as difficult for a time gone myth as for a young person in today’s world.

After another break, the night concluded with Goat (choreography: Ben Duke, Music arranged by Yshani Perinpanayagam) and here a departure for the Rambert, for me at least, as Miguel Altunaga, in the guise of a roving television reporter, interacted with the audience to humorously set the scene. It was a funny and gentle exchange. I have not known one of the dancers address the audience previously, and this cabaret feel was augmented by the use of some of Nina Simone’s better-known numbers, expertly and movingly delivered by Nia Lynn and backed by an on-stage jazz group. It made the fate of the Goat the more uncomfortable to witness as we were taken from this rather relaxed and familiar setting to something very bleak indeed. Such is the power of dance, unhindered by structured verbal narrative, on occasion it can deliver a much more profound blow to the senses. This was evidenced so vividly in another recent Rambert production, Ghost Dances.

So, a rather special evening which left me, for the first time ever when watching the Rambert, unable to select which of the three pieces was my personal favourite.  If you love the colour, story telling and sheer magnificence of an expert dance company and have not booked, you should as it finishes on Saturday. If dance leaves you unmoved, you should still try to see the Rambert, for you may very well be converted.

Review by Sara Fisher

 

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