Local homes for local people call

GORDON Brown attempted to turn around the Government’s fortunes yesterday by promising that local people on Oldham’s 8,000-strong housing waiting list would get priority.

The Prime Minister unveiled a raft of measures under the banner “Building Britain’s Future” — including the pledge to ensure that those with family ties in the area would be pushed up the housing queue.

In Oldham, there are 8,634 people or families on the waiting list — equivalent to 9.6 per cent of the total population of the borough.

Across Greater Manchester, 104,048 homes are needed.

But, after critics questioned the details, No 10 aides made clear that local authorities would still be required to give priority to the homeless and those in the most overcrowded conditions — regardless of how long they had lived locally.

Only after that responsibility had been met, would they be allowed to prioritise “people with a local connection” and “families on the waiting list for a long time”.

Mr Brown announced an additional £1.5 billion would be available to build 20,000 homes. Councils will bid for a slice of the funding but, if split evenly across the country, it would only mean an extra 31 houses in each parliamentary constituency.

The move came alongside policies to give people more power over public services and promises of a guaranteed job, work experience or training place for every under-25 who has been unemployed for a year.

Other proposals include a threat to dock two weeks’ benefit from anyone refusing to “accept that guaranteed offer” — rising to four weeks if they turned down a job a second time, and 26 weeks for a third failure.

There was also the guarantee of hospital treatment within 18 weeks and of an appointment with a cancer specialist within two weeks.

Explaining the new housing waiting list policy, housing minister John Healey denied the shake-up was targeting immigrants, who did not have the right to council housing anyway.

He said: “I would like to see councils taking more responsibility for the way they design the letting policy and then manage it, so that local people feel that they have a fair chance of getting the homes.”

Conservative leader David Cameron warned that the spin on the announcement risked giving the BNP another issue it could exploit.

He added: “Ministers should be very, very careful with the language that they use, that this ‘local homes for local people’ does not become another ‘British jobs for British workers’, which did a huge amount of damage to the prime minister’s credibility.”