Dear Sir,

I had a meeting Livin’s Karen Grundy, Michael Fishwick, and Vicky Miller and Emily Hunter (PCP).

Karen and Emily explained this was their last day on the project, and were moving on to other projects. We began with me outlining the issues regarding Livin’s original bid, and the concerns around Option 3, as Livin had discounted Options 1 & 2.

Livin explained that at York Hill Estate Regeneration there were 150 homes affected of which there were 48 Home Owners who all bought into the scheme.

The houses were cladded and had pitched roofs put on. Average costs were £25,000 per house, and as Livin were a registered charity they had written off about £10,000 per house leaving a charge on their houses of £15,000 each. In the Western Area, compared to York Hill, this is not viable on those grounds as the Western Area is 5 times larger than York Hill. It is untenable to put a charge on houses.

We discussed:

Shared Equity no worse off, a charge on the property, but shear number and length of time, if it is untenable to put charges like York Hill then shared Equity was unlikely to be on offer.

Asset Swap and buy the house.

Straight Swap similar to like for like.

Owners could become a Livin Tenant, Capital effects on benefits.

Shared Ownership pay rent for difference, on bungalows for example.

I put the view that most Owners want no change to their current circumstances at all, and indeed many tenants opposed option 3 and demolition. Shared Equity was a way forward with no cost whilst residents alive, but that was untenable from Livin’s viewpoint because of the numbers.

Livin could not rule out Compulsory Purchase (CPO), I explained how Valuations re CPO i.e. market value +10% plus Home Loss Allowance and Disturbance Allowance was never enough to buy like-for-like on the Estate or anywhere else in Newton Aycliffe.

Livin would not be attending public meetings as they felt these did not represent the Estate.

The impression I got from Livin was that their Tenants would be in favour of Option 3 and thus out-vote Owners in any consultation. I doubted this as it was Livin’s intention that on any rebuilt Estate there would be 100 less Livin Tenants

I expressed deep reser-vations about their sums as losing £480,000 a year rental income let alone reducing the number of Social Housing available to low income families by 100 did not make sense financially.

I gave Livin a copy of my draft Great Aycliffe Residents’ Association 18 page report and the leaflet we had put out, just to be open and transparent with them. They indicated they would put information in the public domain via Newton News.

I was surprised to be the only one invited to this meeting, no other councillor or Livin Champion.

Cllr Arun M Chandran

GARA Secretary