WALTER CRONXITE reports on how the council is getting on with its “ambition” to provide the many new homes needed by its growing population
12
That’s how many new housing units that have been completed by Croydon Council since Labour won control of the Town Hall in May 2014.
Croydon Council went 22 years without building any new homes until Sumner Gardens were completed in 2010
The figures were provided in an official response provided by Alison Butler, the deputy council leader and cabinet member responsible for housing.
Butler’s answer said: “The current Council New Build Phase 4 programme comprises of 33 units of which 12 new homes have started on site since May 2014. All units apart from two units have been handed over and residents have moved in. The remaining two homes are due to be handed over this next week.” That was on October 19.
“Looking forward, the council is forecasting a step change increase in the number of new build homes delivered,” Butler said, promising more jam tomorrow.
In the Croydon Labour manifesto published before those last local elections, Butler and her leader, Tony Newman, had stated: “Croydon has a housing crisis and Labour will make tackling this a priority… If we want a town where big business invests and smaller businesses are given the opportunity to start up and grow, then we must provide decent housing, whether to rent or to buy, that is affordable for all.
“We are ambitious to build new homes to rent and buy to help tackle Croydon’s housing crisis.”
It’s just that building eight new council homes per year doesn’t seem to be overly, well, “ambitious”.
Of course, there’s a massive disincentive for local authorities, such as Croydon, to spend their scarce public resources on building new publicly owned homes: this Tory-run Government wants councils, and now the charities which run housing associations, to be forced to flog-off their social housing, usually at a massive public subsidy on the true market value, which in some cases could amount to £100,000 on a typical family home. It is another insidious effort by the Tories to transfer public assets to the private sector, and usually at a discount.
Croydon Council has been failing to build significant numbers of new social housing for some time. From 1988, under Labour as well as Conservative-controled councils, it went 22 years without building a single new council home. But even as recently as 2010, in the midst of the global economic downturn, the council managed to build at least 20 homes that year. That’s more than twice the rate managed so far under Newman’s leadership.
Alison Butler: slow progress on council homes
These will be the sites which the council’s newly recreated architects’ department will be given the task of developing.
“In relation to grant funding, the Council has secured affordable housing funding from
the GLA for the delivery of 100 affordable homes as part of this programme to start on
site no later than August 2016,” said Butler.
In answer to another question, in respect of the council’s £500,000 fund intended to encourage property owners to bring empty houses back into use as homes for Croydon families, Butler revealed that so far “…grants for 11 homes, amounting to a commitment of £275,000” had been approved, before adding that not a single one of the approved projects had yet been completed.
So that will be
0
homes brought back into use so far then.
Hardly an inspiring record after the first 18 months in office. But then, perhaps the number of homes built simply indicates the real priorities of the senior council officials, the people who really are in control at the Town Hall. Jo Negrini was originally hired as the council’s six-figure-salaried executive director of development and environment, a title which has now been altered to “Place”. Hers is the department responsible for building more council homes, and keeping on-side with big business.
Council official Jo Negrini: her department’s building something. Just not many council homes
Since Negrini’s arrival at Croydon Council, two of the department’s long-standing directors, Tony Brooks and Mike Kiely, have both cleared their desks in Fisher’s Folly. Among the notable new hires at director level have been Colm Lacey as “director of development” and Stephen Tate, who describes his role as “responsible for creating district centres that are places that residents chose to stay by ensuring that they include high quality homes, schools, leisure facilities and parks or open spaces with vibrant and attractive high streets and well-used community spaces”.
Negrini arrived in Croydon from Newham, where she had been working closely with Westfield on their supermall at Stratford. Before that, she had worked on regeneration in Lambeth. Lacey had previously worked at Newham, while other jobs included a spell at Lambeth. Tate’s previous job had been at Lambeth.
It may be, with local authority funds tight, the council can’t spend money it hasn’t got to build houses, especially when in Croydon there’s the promise the private sector will be delivering thousands of rabbit-hutch-sized Yuppie apartments, available at eye-watering high prices or rents. Croydon’s Hammersfield supermall alone will be building at least 400 new homes… though, of course, we now learn that work on the £1 billion development won’t be completed now for at least five years.
In the meantime, we have a council capable of spending £140 million on providing itself with new offices, but incapable of building even nine new homes in a year. Though at least someone in Fisher’s Folly is making good progress with building of another sort: empire-building.
-
Inside Croydon: Named among best regional media campaigns, 2014.
- Croydon’s only independent news source, based in the heart of the borough: 729,297 page views in 2014.
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, a residents’ or business association or local event, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
What a pathetic performance. So “Build Phase 4” has achieved 33 units. With 913 families to house it will take this Council 28 years to solve the problem. But Butler has a different agenda, one of trying to obliterate the Private Landlord. Remember, that evil individual that actually puts roofs over peoples heads and doesn’t cost the Council Tax payer £600.00 a week in hotel bills.
Always good to have someone speak up for the poor, impoverished private landlords, who just manage to scrape by while charging rents of around £1,000 per month for what can often amount to little more than a bedsit – rents that are often subsidised by the tax-payer through housing benefit.
And just to think, these poor put-upon people until recently were not subject to any proper quality control of the properties that they were letting out. What you might call a licence to print money…
Don’t blame the council for building so few houses. With the “Right to buy” scheme all council houses are being sold. Perhaps that should be stopped before building even more for people to buy.
It may be a Tory policy but I am completely against “Right to buy council homes”. Council homes are for vulnerable people who cannot afford to pay higher rent or mortgage.
If people can afford to buy they should move out and give others an opportunity.
Council homes should also be provided to those who have been waiting for a long time and not to those who have just come in.