I somehow missed it when it was originally posted in October, but Omar has a fine report on the goings on in Hammersmith and Fulham. With housing being such a major issue everywhere andCrawley Labour party making it the major plank of our election campaign, its a good time to be reminded of the fundamental difference between the parties.
The story is basically that the council, while in Labour hands, approved a development of 499 homes, with the mix being 75% affordable and 25% market value. Later on the developers wanted to make some slight changes to their plans which required getting planning permission for the revised plans
In the meantime the council had changed hands and the Tories had taken control. The new council told the developers that their plans would stand no chance of getting approved unless they dropped the percentage of affordable homes, and after the leader of the council had been round to meet the developers they duly came back with a revision which reduced the affordable homes element to 20%
The planning committee passed the new application with every Tory voting for it and every Labour member voting against.
We already knew from Westminster that the Tories don’t like affordable housing as the occupants are less likely to vote for them, hence their attempts at ‘social engineering’ or gerrymandering there resulting in Shirley Porter pretending to be too poor to pay her surcharge.
“We already knew from Westminster that the Tories don’t like affordable housing as the occupants are less likely to vote for them, hence their attempts at ‘social engineering’ or gerrymandering there”
LOL – good to see that hypocrisy isn’t dead in the Crawley Labour Party.
Of course Labour would never indulge in a bit of social engineering to shore up their vote – but did you ever wonder where Mrs Porter got thr idea from? – why from Peter Mandleson’s grandfather, Herbert Morrison who decided that Labour were going to ‘Build the Tories out of London’
And as for Labours ‘love’ of affordable housing, well they’ve built less than the last administration and we now have less social housing that at any time since WW2 – a wonderful record.
Glad you missed it at the time because it was a complete load of cobblers – and your story above is even a misreporting of Omar’s slanted version of what happened.
The change was to bring in more shared ownership and low cost homes to buy rather than having such a high proportion of rented homes. Livingstone has now backed down and agreed to the development with some slight changes.
If the Tories deliver low-income families in Crawley such a good deal – it’s a great reason to vote for them.
Shared ownership is a rip-off. Who wants to own 25% of a house, and still be 100% responsible for the cost of any repairs?
it might be hard to believe but not everybody wants to own a home, not even a slightly cheap one.