THE entire housing stock of a North-East council is to leave local authority control after a £480m deal.
The non-profit making Sunderland Housing Group has accepted backing from The Royal Bank of Canada and ABM-AMRO consortium, which will enable it to start improvement work on the 38,000 council houses in the city.
Some 88 per cent of tenants voted to allow Sunderland City Council to transfer its housing stock to the group in a poll last November. More than 73 per cent of all tenants voted.
The council started the transfer process two years ago after announcing that it could not complete major repair works needed on council housing without a steep increase in rents.
The authority is also limited by law in the amount of money that it can borrow at one time.
A spokeswoman for the Sunderland Housing Group said that four international consortia had applied to back the organisation.
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