Construction union UCATT have warned that a new report from the CBI is a thinly disguised call for the private sector to be given unfettered access to plunder social housing contracts for profit.

The report Improving homes, improving lives: using competition for better social housing, claims that £1.5 billion could be saved by opening up social housing to additional competition.

Alan Ritchie, General Secretary of UCATT, said: "Council housing is the most outsourced section of local government. Housing repairs and maintenance contracts have been subject to external tendering for years. The outsourcing of these services always results in poorer services and increased costs. The CBI report isn’t really about improving services and saving money; it is about boosting the profits of the CBI’s members."

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The timing of the CBI report is particularly ill timed coming just weeks after Connaught, which specialised in the outsourcing of social housing repairs and maintenance contracts, was forced into administration. Resulting in over a thousand workers being made redundant and many continuing to face an uncertain future. Since Connaught’s collapse many tenants have faced the misery of essential repairs and much needed maintenance on their properties being cancelled.

Mr Ritchie, added: "The collapse of Connaught demonstrates what happens when public sector services are outsourced. Private companies can go bust and the public are then left without essential services. If the CBI were really serious about high quality social housing they would be calling for contracts to be taken back in house and a far larger amount of money spent on building new council housing to tackle the growing homelessness crisis."

(CD/BMcC)