28 May 2004
Mayor of London Ken Livingstone has backed calls for the government's new key worker housing scheme to be extended to a wider range of employees.
Accusing ministers of playing to the electorate by including only workers that are seen as the 'most popular politically', he supported unions and employers that claim the Key Worker Living Scheme is too selective.
Speaking at a conference in London, he promised to 'keep plugging away' at the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which launched the scheme two months ago as a successor to the Starter Home Initiative.
A broader range of workers, including social workers and local authority planners, can now apply for equity loans and other support along with teachers, nurses and police officers. But Livingstone, who is standing for Labour in next month's mayoral elections, said that all NHS staff should be eligible.
'If you find yourself in a hospital where the porters and cleaning staff are not up to scratch, you could find yourself with a different disease to the one you went in with,' he told the conference on May 25.
Nor should private sector workers automatically be excluded, he added. 'We have to get back to them [the ODPM] and point out that the ex-asylum seeker cleaning a hotel in Mayfair is just as important to the city.'
Earlier, Malcolm Wing, head of negotiations at the public sector union Unison, said many hospitals found it more difficult to recruit health care assistants than nurses. 'Every horror story in the NHS can be traced back to staff shortages,' he said.
John Trayner, operations director at Go-Ahead, which owns two London bus companies, appealed for transport workers to be 'invited to the party' even though they work for private firms. 'If you can't move, then nothing happens,' he said.
But housing minister Keith Hill said the government had been forced to take tough decisions over who to leave out. 'Spreading the money more thinly wouldn't have achieved the improvements we want,' he said.
Hill revealed that 1,700 people had already applied to join the scheme in London alone, 1,100 of whom had had their applications approved. The scheme, worth £690m, aims to help 16,500 workers buy or rent homes over two years.
'I'm delighted that the Key Worker Living Scheme is proving phenomenally popular,' said Hill.
PFmay2004
