TORY OPPOSITION LEADER ATTACKS LAMBETH OVER HOUSING – and “councilors who vote as they are ordered to”
The Conservative opposition leader on Lambeth council has slammed the Labour-controlled council as “poor housebuilders and even worse landlords.”
Cllr Tim Briggs makes his comments in a written reply to a question from a Labour councilor at tomorrow night’s (Wednesday) full meeting of Lambeth council at Elmcourt school in West Norwood.
Cllr Iain Simpson (Lab Streatham Hill) asks Cllr Briggs:
Given that the housing bill is currently undergoing defeat after defeat in the House of Lords, will the Leader of the Opposition Group end his indifference to this piece of legislation and finally come out against a Bill which does nothing for those aspiring to buy a home and would be disastrous for council housing throughout this borough?
Cllr Briggs, replying, says: “Only a council with councillors who vote as they are ordered to, rather than according to their own consciences, would see amendments to parliamentary bills as ‘defeats’, rather than a proper and useful constitutional process.”
Cllr Briggs then makes the following points:
Those aspiring to buy a home:
“The whole point of the bill is to enable housebuilding across the UK, not to provide even more resources to councils like Lambeth that have shown themselves to be poor housebuilders and even worse landlords.
“This Labour administration either concentrates on high-end unaffordable developments in Vauxhall, or council housing, but nothing for the majority of people in between.
“The housing and planning bill will make it easier for local communities and builders to develop houses, and will reform the planning system to do that.
“Annual housing supply in England amounted to 170,690 net additional dwellings in 2014-15, which is a 25 per cent increase in net additional dwellings from 2013-14. “The bill once enacted should help increase those numbers significantly.”
Council housing throughout this borough:
“Labour nationally has a poor record on building council houses. “More council houses have been built in the UK since 2010 under the Tories than under Labour in the previous 13 years.
“As a result the Labour administration in Lambeth is desperate to prove itself a housebuilder, but it does so by demolishing people’s homes without a mandate, in order to build new flats.
“Since Myatt’s Field* is the only example we have to go by, these will be poorly constructed, badly managed and unaffordable for residents, and taking away the right to buy means that tenants end up stuck and unable to move.
“Cllr Simpson could spend time scrutinising the disaster of capital works and major repairs in Lambeth carried out by Lambeth council and its suppliers, as a result of contracts designed under the Labour administration which have proved wasteful, ineffective and lacking in accountability.”
*Myatts Field North, Camberwell SE5
