Rehousing Council Tenants

[bigbanana]

A friend of mine lives on a local authority estate which really amounts to only one street with houses on either side.

There are 96 house in the street of which 9 have been bought from the council and are owner occupied. The rest of the houses are occupied by council tenants.

Recently there has been some drainage problems on the street with evidence of sewerage pipes moving out of alignment. This combined with known cracks in the walls of some houses seems to point to subsidence occurring on the estate. The council have had the drains etc surveyed by camera and are awaiting reports before deciding what to do next.

I understand that if the problems cannot be repaired economically, the council will consider demolishing the estate as the part of the estate required underpinning shortly after being built in 1972.

What my friend would like to know is are the council obliged to rehouse the tenants if the estate has to be knocked down. It seems that the council has very few houses free to allocate in the town and has nowhere near 96 empty houses free to take all these owners/tenants. Could the council wash their hands of their obligation to the occupiers, terminate their occupancy contracts and tell them they need to look for private rented accomodation?

The owner occupiers also fear that a compulsory purchase order on their properties would only return to them the purchase price of the properties rather than the market value. Is this true?

Thank you very much for any assistance.

[Ethel]

The council are legally obliged to rehouse the tenants in suitable accommodation.

Compulsory purchase has to be at market value - whether that is the value of a house with subsidence is a moot point.