asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he would be prepared to make any further funds available to local authorities to defray the cost involved in implementing Circular No. 876 from his Department.

Although in the short run helping tenants to set up a co-operative will take time and effort on the part of local authority staff, this could be well offset by improved and more efficient standards of management and maintenance and by bringing additional personal resources into housing. In these circumstances I regret that I cannot, with the present constraints on public expenditure, allocate further funds for this purpose than are already available for housing activities generally.