Having somewhere suitable to live is a basic requirement for a decent life. As a local councillor I regularly speak with people whose lives are impacted by poor housing.
Some residents are overcrowded, with children of different ages sharing the same bedroom and adults sleeping in the front room. Sometimes rented houses are poorly maintained with mouldy walls affecting children’s health and a heating system that is expensive and carbon intensive. I used to live in a shared house where one of the tenants acted as an agent for the landlord: the more people he moved in the greater the profit. At one point there were eleven of us living in a five-bedroom house. It will come as no surprise that a landlord this unscrupulous resorted to illegal evictions.
In London, the housing crisis means prices and rents have gone up way beyond what many of us can afford. Even where rents can be paid, the proportion of income sucked into housing leaves people struggling in other areas. In response to this Labour is building 750 new council houses in the Royal Borough of Greenwich. Our cabinet lead for housing Cllr Anthony Okereke has ensured each property will have high environmental standards, strong design and rents that ordinary people can afford.
In Blithdale Road, Plumstead, we are building two five-bedroom family houses. Each has its own garden and solar panels to save on carbon emissions. In Gilbourne Road we are building fifteen houses including eight that are one-bedroom apartments and a wheelchair accessible three-bedroom property.
For both sites I attended planning committee and spoke in favour of building homes that residents can afford. There are many legitimate reasons to object to planning applications, but sometimes people seem to be saying “of course I support building more houses, but not here”. If each site receives enough “not here” objections, then nothing will get built. There are now 300 council houses started or approved: I think we are winning the fight to get new homes built. Three of the sites have been shortlisted for design and sustainability awards and residents have begun to move in to completed homes.
Local authorities can not solve the London housing crisis on their own. The shortage of land in our capital makes each plot cost a fortune. Councils can borrow money to fund building, but this only gets us some of the way. We need massive investment in house building, from central government, to create the sustainable buildings required for a zero-carbon future. For a couple of decades after World War Two, governments of all kinds built massive numbers of new houses. Gradually priorities changed and the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg became the first to provide no central funding at all for house building.
The Conservative Party is sometimes accused of looking back to a version of the 1950’s where everyone was chipper and knew their place. I don’t think post war Britain was like that, but if Brexit is their dream of returning to an imagined past, could they please include Harold Macmillan’s policy of building 300,000 council houses a year? For levelling up in the north or building a carbon zero future across the UK, a government with ambition is needed.
While we wait for central government to engage with the bigger picture, in Greenwich our Labour council will continue to build homes that people can afford.
More information on Greenwich Builds
Greenwich Builds | Royal Borough of Greenwich (royalgreenwich.gov.uk)
Matt Morrow 