CAN WE PLEASE HAVE SOME COMPASSION IN OUR HOUSING POLICY?

Of course it makes economic sense; of course it is the sensible, smart, financially clever thing to do. But it could kill someone...

Last month the Tories said that it would be their policy to move people out of under-occupied council houses and in to accommodation which was more suitable for them, in order that the larger properties could be used to better effect.

There was, said the Tories, a terrible shortage of council housing. They failed to mention that this was because all the decent stuff had been sold off by some Tory woman in the 1980s and that most of the remaining stock had over the years had to be knocked down as it was too dilapidated and badly constructed to save.

They failed too, to mention that because of the “right to buy” policy councils no longer built public housing and that this was why there was a shortage. It had clearly never occurred to Mrs Thatcher that there would still be poor people who needed council housing.

I suppose they might have mentioned that their political opponents, Labour, had been happy for that situation to continue and that, only in Scotland, where there was a break from the constant Tory – Labour roundabout, had the sale of council houses been stopped and the building of council houses been started.

So... now we come to a real life situation. Barnet council, a North London Tory borough has decided to evict Mr Edward Meakin from the house he has lived in for....wait for it....74 years.

Yes Mr Meakin went to live there with him mum and dad and siblings when he was 9 years old. In May his last remaining sister died leaving him living alone in a 3-bedroomed house.... so now the council has told him to leave.

Can you imagine the memories that, at 83, Mr Meakin has of his house? He was a child there; he played in that garden, then he was a “teenager” (although they didn’t call them that then).

He probably went away to war, or if not at least to National Service from that house and returned to it after doing his bit. He worked as a window cleaner from that house and then retired in that house. Over the years he grew middle aged, lost his mum and dad, grew old and lost his siblings.... Now he is an old man, and his memories centre around that house.

He doubts that he would last long in the flat they want to move him too. “I’ve got my garden and all my life here. Why do they want to take it away from me?” he said. “Why can’t they just leave me till I die?”

A spokesman for Barnet Council (the one that lost £27.4m in the Icelandic banking crisis because they failed to follow the proper procedures when depositing the money) said that 3 bedroom houses were in short supply in the borough and while they sympathised with Mr Meakin they had to balance that with the needs of large numbers of people in the community.

I know that Mr Cameron wants people on lower wages to be able to move from town to town to chase the little work there is, and I realise that that requires the availability of council housing so that people can move within a week or so to suit the employers’ needs (lower level jobs usually require a relatively speedy start, sometime immediate!), but isn’t there a wee bit more to life than making sound economic sense?

Does no one in Barnet really worry that breaking this old man’s heart; tearing him from his house and from his beloved garden may kill him?