Over 1,000 Families Thrown off Waiting List

8.51.27pm GMT Fri 22nd Jan 2010

Recent suggestions by Conservative Housing spokesperson, Alan Law, that the Housing Waiting List in West Berkshire was coming down have led to the discovery that over 1,000 families have been unceremoniously dumped off the waiting list.

"When the numbers on the Waiting List reached 5,463 on 01/04/09 (three times as high as they had been five years earlier), the Conservatives running the Council decided to do a complete review of the whole list," commented David Rendel, Newbury's Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesperson.

"A single letter was written to each household asking them to confirm that they still wished to remain on the List. The letter also told them that if they did not respond their application would be cancelled. Over 1330 households were then removed from the list without any further warning or check to see why they had not responded.

"Given that over 4,000 households replied to say that they still wanted to be on the list, while only 10 wrote back to say that they no longer needed to be on the list, it seems likely that most of the 1330 who did not reply also wanted to remain on. But it is in the nature of such a list that a considerable proportion will be people who move around frequently as they have no permanent home. Others may suffer from various vulnerabilities, such as mental or physical disability, which may make it difficult and stressful to have to fill in official forms. In yet other cases the Council's letter or the applicant's reply may simply have got lost in the post, or in the Council's filing system.

"From my experience as an MP, I know that, whenever the Council carries out a review of this kind, many families find out years later that they had been removed from the list without their knowledge. They cannot understand why it is taking so long to be offered a home of their own. To dump them off the list without even a reminder letter or a follow-up investigation is just heartless, and to use the process as an excuse for claiming that the Council is doing well in providing housing for those in need….well, it just beggars belief".