AN advocate for council tenants and housing in Swindon has criticised a leading councillor for a lack of understanding about social housing.

When the leader of the Labour group at Swindon Borough Council, Jim Grant, complained that the authority’s wholly-owned housing development company had so far cost the council £400,000, but had not built any homes, the Conservative administration’s cabinet member for finance defended the company.

Coun Russell Holland said the current administration wanted to build homes to sell to raise revenue for the council, while the Labour group wanted to build council houses.“That cost the council and the taxpayer money.”

Now Martin Wicks, the secretary of the Swindon Tenants Campaign Group has criticised that remark.

He said: “Russell Holland’s extraordinary outburst reported in the Advertiser ( £400k for no houses ‘money down the drain’) shows his prejudice against council housing and his seeming lack of understanding of council housing finance.

“How exactly building council housing will cost the council money is a mystery. The ring fence of the housing revenue account makes it illegal to use council tax for council housing. What few are being built are paid for by use of Right to Buy receipts, housing revenue account resources and borrowing. The cost of servicing housing revenue account borrowing is paid for by council tenants alone.”

Mr Wicks, who was also secretary of Swindon TUC and a transport union activist for many years added that the housing crisis had led to other council leaders saying the country needed many more houses built for social rent.

He wrote: “ Lord Gary Porter (a Conservative councillor and vice chairman of the Local Government Association) said that the last time 300,000 homes were built in England more than 40 per cent of them were built by councils. That’s what we need to return to. Obviously Swindon’s Tories don’t agree.”

Mr Wicks added: “The Tory group appears content that the number of council homes at the disposal of the council is lower now than in 2011. They support the continuation of Right to Buy which is in large part responsible for the chronic shortage of council housing. Yet they are using tenants’ rent, as well as RTB receipts, to buy back ex-council homes to cut the amount of people they have to put into the more expensive private rented sector. Of course, they have to pay a lot more to buy them than the original tenant paid.

Coun Holland was approached for a comment.