The "dial-a-home" scheme proposed to fill hundreds of empty Council houses in Bradford rings several alarm bells. The motivation behind the plan is worthy enough. There are presently up to 7,000 people on the waiting list. Meanwhile, there are 400 houses standing empty - houses which have been rejected by the people on the list who have sufficient points to have been offered a home, largely because they are in "areas of low demand".

That is a bureaucratic euphemism for areas which have such a bad reputation that few people will volunteer to live there. So the suggestion is that those houses should be allocated to anyone who wants them on a first come, first served basis and regardless of points status or place on the list.

That would certainly shorten the waiting list and end the scandal of hundreds of homes standing empty when there is a clear need for them, costing the Council about £1 million a year in repairs. The danger, though, is that this fast-track allocation of housing might by-pass the usual system of references, allowing the houses to go to unsuitable tenants.

Residents who had sighed with relief at seeing bad neighbours evicted, and were hoping that their replacements might "lift" the district, could be bitterly disappointed by seeing equally bad neighbours move in.

Any reduction in red tape is generally to be welcomed. But there remains a need for the Council to make sure that the people it accepts as tenants are suitable and will not prove to be a nuisance to the community in which they are going to live.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.