Camden New Journal - News: Housing policies

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Camden New Journal - by PAUL KEILTHY
Published: 25 October 2007

Cllr Keith Moffitt and Nick Clegg MP outside the British Library on Monday

Library land sale ‘an acid test’ for Brown’s housing policies

Lib Dem leadership hopeful urges PM: ‘Actions speak louder than words’

THE government’s sale of vacant land behind the British Library presents Gordon Brown with an “acid test” of his housing policies, according to a front-runner in the Lib Dem leadership contest.
MP Nick Clegg’s intervention came as grassroots campaigners mounted a second week of protest at the refusal of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to guarantee new housing will go up on the 3.6 acre brownfield site it is selling in Somers Town.
Mr Clegg challenged the Prime Minister on the issue in an interview with the New Journal at the library on Tuesday.
He said: “The way housing has suddenly burst onto the political scene is a belated reflection of how housing – or the lack of it – has acted as a real brake on people’s life chances.
“Housing on this site would be entirely consistent with what [Housing Minister] Yvette Cooper and Gordon Brown have said. They haven’t gone public saying ‘we need more shops’, they’ve gone public saying ‘we need more housing’. So when disposing of government land such as that site, it should be quite rightly looked at as an acid test. Actions speak louder than words.”
Campaigners in Somers Town called on the government last night (Wednesday) to call off the sale and on Camden Council to intervene to ensure housing and community facilities are favoured over office or retail development at the site.
But in a letter to the New Journal , Culture Minister Margaret Hodge entered the debate with an insistence that “the Department cannot sell the land with conditions.”
She said: “As we have repeatedly said, the decision on what is built on the site is not for DCMS to decide, but for Camden Council as the local planning authority... The Department will have no say in the matter... Local councillors and residents should therefore present their views and concerns to the Camden planning committee.”
But Cllr Keith Moffitt said the government was ‘dodging the issue’. He said: “In Gordon Brown’s housing green paper there is specific mention of building houses on publicly owned brown field sites. Once they think they can get a lot of money for it they seem to change their minds.”
He added however, that he did not support the campaigners: “It would be a mistake to think that the land should be devoted exclusively to housing. we need to maximise housing but we need to maximise it in the right place.”
Somers Town People’s Forum activist Candy Udwin said Labour ward councillor Roger Robinson and Labour MP Frank Dobson were writing to the housing and culture secretaries.
She added: “The council blames the government and the government lays the responsibility at the door of the council. We are going to ask ministers to intervene.”
She said a deputation of campaigners would be going to the Town Hall. Protesters are demanding meetings with government ministers to ensure the voices of St Pancras and Somers Town residents are heard.

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