UKC

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge came to Sunny Blackpool today and Prince William spoke out about Slum Landlords. Good for him, because its disgusting how some poor souls have to exist in this town.

I saw on tonight's ITN News that William and Kate wanted to see such a property and they did not want the experience sanitised. A property was selected and small film crew joined them, i.e a bloke with a small camera. I can't find much on Youtube but I found part of the clip that ITN broadcast this evening. Even though the room looked quite bad I can report that this is not uncommon and sadly there are considerably more properties, and in far worse conditions than this one.

I am glad that a light is being shone on this lovely town, but the council need to do more rather than close their eyes to the problem for fear of losing the mighty "Tourist Pound".

But who's fault is it really that Slum Landlords can keep properties that are so awful, and should Prince William and Kate keep their mouths shut and not bring such subjects up?

youtube.com/watch?v=bp7rZBumzlc&

Good on them for taking an interest, but it's a sad reflection on society that it takes the involvement of overprivileged inheritors of status to bring such issues to public attention in our media.

I'm sure that if the irresponsible landlords were predominantly non-white or not from the UK the media would already have been all over the story.

Exactly this. Several poverty & social campaigners, journalists (and others), have complained about this issue for some time (and against any notion that freemarkets will drive up the quality of housing stock). 

It's absurd that it takes a person of no insight, specialism or experience of the problem to gain any kind of wider publicity.

Lived near BP for years and worked there for several. Pitiful out of season and, like many other coastal towns with substantial 'holiday flat' accommodation, loads of shockingly bad housing.

Good to see it in the mainstream media, sunlight being the best disinfectant and all that.

Surprised at the negative response to this and can only conclude that my post is seen (by those sensitive to such things) as royal-bashing, when actually it was media-bashing with a slice of inequality-highlighting thrown in for good measure.

Must have been the "overprivileged inheritors of status" that didn't go down well, which leaves me wondering whether the dislikers disagree that royal status is inherited, whether they think royal privilege is at a perfectly reasonable level, or whether the dislikes were kneejerk and without particular focus.

"But who's fault is it really that Slum Landlords can keep properties that are so awful, and should Prince William and Kate keep their mouths shut and not bring such subjects up?"

I am unsure what you mean by this comment. I am generally no fan of the royals on the basis that they are at the top of a system on undeserved privilege. However if they use their status to highlight issues such as this, it does at least provide some value for money. why do you suggest that it may be appropriate for them to keep their mouths shut? Just curious

It's an open ended question to hopefully get a conversation started.

Or we could just all blather on about Brexit, which I am bored senseless with after reading about it on these forums over the last two years.

Like them or not one thing the royal family  are very good at is using their elevated status to raise awareness to issues like this. Most of us live in a protected bubble, unaware just how bad the world can be for others - yet one royal visit and half the country are taking about the issue. 

I didn’t dislike your post, but I’ve got no idea why you decided to bring race into the debate. 

Re Prince William, good on them for raising the subject, but I am a bit unsure about one of Britain’s biggest land owners weighing in to property issues. 

There are certainly examples of that, I agree. Whether it's right that it should be left to such examples to inform the public of important issues is another matter. The OP is, after all, a story about royals as much or more than a story about rental accommodation.

A good analogy can be drawn with philanthropic industrialists in the Victorian era. They almost certainly were responsible for very significant benefits to poorer communities and wider society in all sorts of ways, but much of that kind of support should be (and to a greater extent now is) the responsibility of a welfare state rather than being left to the whim of concerned powerful individuals, however well meaning they may be.

Only to highlight the inequity of what the media seems to choose to push - or what the public seems to choose to be interested in. Race issues appear to sell newspapers and generate clicks, as do stories about royals. Less so stories of poor quality accommodation.

Slums existed in the past and the problem was addressed by provision of social housing. Social housing provision has been half wiped out since Thatcher started the ball rolling with right to buy and bingo we've got slum landlords again.

I've no problem with any high profile person highlighting the problems. But I assume being royalty they are not allowed to suggest any policy measures to fix it.

Indeed. I find it incredulous that it could not have been predicted that the sell-off of the social housing stock to people. who in the main. wouldn't have the resouces or will to maintain them, would result in a return of the slums.

I don't think that is what happened. Most social housing purchased by occupiers is now just freehold housing like any other. It was an incredible loss of a common asset at knock down prices and also probably has a lot to do with the mad house price inflation of the last 30 years.

You have the luxury of hindsight, as we all do to pontificate but I'm guessing that nobody really knew what would happen. No matter how much I hate Thatcher I don't think that she would have started a scheme if she knew it would  degenerate to today's standards. I would hope.

Believe me, I didn't need it.

You must have a great crystal ball then.

Intresting, you appear to be correct it that the evidence availble from a quick google supports what you say.

"Only a small proportion of resales of RTB properties have entered the private rented market. Evidence is patchy, but estimates suggested that by 2002 just six per cent of RTB resales had entered the private rented market. Just over a third (37 per cent) of all RTB property had been resold by this date. (Scottish Executive, 2006)"

This statement is relevant to Scotland. I can only guess that the 6% figure is broadly applicable to rest of the UK.

I do wonder if the 6% figure has increased significantly in the last 16 years and whether there is now a disproportionate number of these properties which could be classified a "slum"...

Link: https://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-committees/communities-and-loca...

"I'm sure that if the irresponsible landlords were predominantly non-white or not from the UK the media would already have been all over the story."

I suspect this is why you got all the dislikes

Let me flip it for you so you can dislike this post..

I suspect all the landlords are Pakistani because they are getting away with it.  I am sure that if they were white, the local council would be all over them like a rash pressing charges for HMO licenses as no fear of being branded prejudiced, bigoted racists. I mean, look at the northern grooming gangs getting away with it for years by people turning blind eyes....

Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?

Not really.

1. Social housing is provided by councils.

2. Councils are instructed to sell off social housing (at below market value) but are not allowed to use the income to build more social housing.

3. There is a then a lack of social housing, forcing people to use the private rented sector.

4. Slum landlords exploit the demand.

It's not exactly difficult to predict.

Very perceptive for a thirteen/fourteen year old...

What can I say? Billy Bragg kept me well informed of the ills of Thatcherism. I'll admit it may have been the mid-eighties before I recognised it but 30 years of hindsight definately wasn't required to see this policy wasn't a move in the right direction. I'm sure it will have been great for some but not for the many.

Sounds ridiculous, yes. Thankfully it bears almost no relation to what I wrote.

The fact is that it's taken the actions of a celeb to highlight an important societal wrong in a way that people want to read and share. Why is it that media interest could not be generated for the story without having another 'angle', whether that be royal, race or anything else? Why is such a story of low interest compared to what celebs might have had for breakfast? And, more importantly, can anything be done to start to reverse this trend?

I disagree. You started off with a valid point then shoe-horned in a racial aspect based on what appears to be nothing more than a personal theory / paranoia for reasons only really obvious to yourself. 

So I gave another example of someone looking at the issue through the prism of a prejudice based on woolly thinking to highlight why I felt you had attracted all the dislikes which seemed to have mystified you. 

In reply to your other points about media interest, I broadly agree that it’s frustrating that such stories do not make headlines but am not surprised. I try to read a good selection of broadsheets and tabloids and would say that the Guardian usually covers this type of story pretty well with guys like Aditya Chakriborty. Tv news is just sound bites and rarely in depth. More a subject for panorama watchdog or similar I would guess

Feel free to disagree but I assure you that there was nothing racial intended, or written, except to highlight that race issues are very popular with media editors, certainly compared to issues of social iniquity. If you and others inferred something else then perhaps I need to pussyfoot more carefully in future.

I very much doubt that the 6% figure is representative of elsewhere.  

https://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2016/feb/10/right-to-buy-ex-cou...

40% according to this. 

You didn't need a crystal ball to know that putting the social housing stock into private ownership and not replacing it would benefit one generation and leave a hole in the safety net for the next.

I remember my father agonising over the decision to buy at the time - we had a large family and needed an extension, but he knew what the consequences of this policy would be and didn't want to be a part of that.