Not Decent: my response to H&F’s local development framework consultation

If you’ve been following the development of Hammersmith and Fulham’s Tory Council and its radically right-wing housing policy, here is my submission to the Local Development Framework Core Options Strategy.

The Core Options Strategy is the show consultation the council is conducting – of course, I and housing campaigners across the borough believe that the council has already made up its mind on what to do, since their plans have nothing to do with providing decent housing and everything to do with cold, cynical, political manouvering.

NOT DECENT! THE EVOLUTION OF RADICAL TORY SOCIAL HOUSING POLICY

REPONSE TO LB HAMMERSMITH & FULHAM LOCAL DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK CORE OPTIONS STRATEGY (‘the LDF’)

BY ANDY SLAUGHTER, MP FOR EALING, ACTON & SHEPHERDS BUSH

I wish to object formally to the LDF published in June 2009.  This purports to be a statutory document which sets out the local authority’s development plans for the borough over the next 20 years.  It is not.  It is a proposal to change radically the social make up of the area by enforced demolition of thousands of local homes.  It seeks party political advantage from the dispersal of communities it believes are politically not aligned with the ruling Conservative administration.  It seeks to act as a practical example of future Conservative housing policy as proposed by the leader of the council in his recent pamphlet Principles of Social Housing Reform.  In order to achieve these objectives it has required the misuse of public funds in support of Conservative Party objectives.  This point is the subject of a separate report by me to the council’s District Auditor.

Sections 7 and 8 of the LDF set out in writing for the first time the council’s preferred option to demolish at least 3,500 homes on estates it has declared ‘not decent neighbourhoods’.

Documents I have recovered from the council through a freedom of information act request reveal that the leader of the council told senior Tory officials that council estates are ‘ghettoes’. The people who live there ‘add to the welfare cost of government’ and ‘have fallen into a cycle of unemployment and dependency’. ‘We (the taxpayer)’ get ‘no return’, he said. ‘What is needed’ is ‘a solution to concentrations of deprivation’.   Selective statistics are used to suggest that these estates are unsalvageable and that the communities on them must be destroyed. The sites will be used mainly for commercial development such as hotels and conference centres. There would be a reduction of social rented homes by up to a third, and new housing for sale would be unaffordable to local residents.

In the meantime, all but health and safety repairs to the properties would cease and flats would be let on a temporary basis. Whole neighbourhoods are now blighted, with freeholders and leaseholders unable to sell, even though demolition could be years away. For the remaining social tenants in the borough – almost 40 per cent of the population – there would be no prospect of re-housing for 20 years as the displaced residents took the few homes that become available.

But the targeted estates are places that all types of people wish to live – from pensioners and young families to first-time buyers and professionals. Many millions of pounds of public money have been spent on them under the Decent Homes programme. There is no need to destroy these communities. Residents are naturally furious at the proposals and don’t want to be forced into smaller homes at higher rents. They rightly regard the communities they live in as balanced and harmonious.  In terms of tenure some of the targeted estates are already split 50/50 between socially rented and leasehold/freehold properties, and this trend towards home ownership is likely to continue.

The role of the local authority should be to ensure there is a sufficient supply of all types of housing, but particularly social rented housing as this is subject to the greatest demand and is most required to fulfill the council’s obligations to those in overcrowded or unsatisfactory housing and the homeless.  While it may be the aim of the current administration to seek legislative change from any future Conservative government to end security of tenure, subsidized rents, duties towards the homeless and any capital allocation for housing, this is not the current law and council policy should not be determined by it.

It is not in any event the role of local authorities to socially engineer their populations, nor to solicit and work with developers to the detriment of their existing residents.  Copies of this objection with supporting documentation will be sent to the District Auditor and the Minister for Housing at the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Andy Slaughter MP

Tagged as: H&F Council, Housing