THE Liberal Democrat "rump" of just three members who retained their seats on Waverley Council at this month's elections, have made their first challenge to the fresh policies of the 51-member Conservative administration. Their leader, Ken Reed, who under the deposed Lib Dems held the portfolio for housing, has taken the new Conservative leader of the council Richard Gates to task over promises to install double glazing in 1,000 council homes. At Waverley's annual council meeting on Tuesday, Mr Gates said doubled glazing for the first 200 homes was "almost ready to roll and will enable the homes to meet the Decent Homes Standard". But speaking after the meeting, Mr Reed attacked the promise as "pure spin" and claimed the use of the money for double glazing would actually hamper attempts to meet the standard. "Unfortunately for councillor Gates (and Waverley's tenants) double glazing does not form part of the government's Decent Homes Standard, so spending £3 million on double glazing for 1,000 council homes – however desirable - will do nothing to help Waverley achieve the standard for its housing stock." Mr Reed claimed: "All that this promise will do is to take Waverley even further away from meeting that target by taking £3 million out of the £9 million that had been allocated to Decent Homes work by the previous Liberal Democrat administration. "It is bad enough that Waverley is prevented from meeting DHS by the government, who will take around 44 per cent of tenants' rent money this year, without the new Conservative administration spending what money there is on non-Decent Homes works such as double glazing. "Hopefully Waverley's Tenants Panel will tell councillor Gates that this is a half-baked promise that won't help Waverley achieve DHS. There is still time, as I am sure that the work on installing double glazing in 200 homes has not actually started yet." Mr Gates has replied that although double glazing in itself was not part of the government specification for Decent Homes, windows of a satisfactory nature are. And where the 200 houses involved were concerned, it was the windows that were the major factor in not meeting the standard. "If you need to replace draughty and rotting windows, you would be daft not to replace with double glazed," he added, pointing out that in tenant surveys it was the one thing almost everyone wanted. Pat Frost, who has taken on the housing portfolio, added: "The proposals to double-glaze 1,000 of Waverley's council houses is to respond to tenant aspirations, improve security and the look of the property, help to increase thermal comfort (another DHS requirement) and reduce the cost of heating for the occupier, as well as contributing towards the overall Decent Homes Standard requirement for the council's homes."
