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Force developers to play their part in cutting housing queue
• It’s budget time at the council.
Pleasingly, this year’s budget has belatedly put some cash aside to spend on tackling anti-social behaviour in Finsbury Park, an issue Labour has campaigned for over a series of years. I only hope there is no reduction in police presence around the Nag’s Head as a result of this budgetary measure.
On housing, I am pleased the council is investing £10million in new-build council properties, which will mostly be constructed on existing housing stock land. However, in reality, this will not produce the number of properties we need in Islington. This budgetary measure is a drop in the ocean when you consider there are 13,000 households on the housing list.
At no extra cost in budgetary terms, the council could be increasing its housing stock dramatically by enforcing the Mayor of London’s 50 per cent rule, where all developers who submit applications have to plan half of their residential units for local people.
Last year, this borough could have benefited from at least 140 new units had this 50 per cent rule been implemented. The benefit to the community is not just in the numbers but in the mix of provision, so that new council housing is not being piled on top of old but is being created in new developments, thus creating genuinely mixed communities. The benefit to the Islington tax-payer is that the burden falls on the developer rather than the council to provide the bulk of new properties.
Labour will unveil its “shadow” budget in a week’s time and will focus on achieving not just a piecemeal approach to crime and housing affordability, but a vision of a safer, more cohesive society which seeks in bold terms to address the divisions which keep one part of Islington so disparate from the other.
Cllr Catherine West
Islington Labour group leader
• I noted more scaremongering from the leader of the opposition on Islington Council (Offices sell-off will force staff to ‘hotdesk’, February 15).
Once again, she is trying to raise people’s anxieties about cuts to social services, going as far as claiming that the council will be “chasing old people out of their homes”. Her hysterical claims and inventions are extremely misleading and a gross distortion of the truth.
Under the Liberal Democrats, the council is committed to providing services to more vulnerable people. Most boroughs in London – indeed, three-quarters of councils across the country – now only provide services to people they judge as having “substantial”, or even “critical” needs. In Islington, the Lib Dems are committed to helping people before their needs become substantial. By doing so we are helping to maintain the independence and dignity of vulnerable and older people. And an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
That’s why the Lib Dem council budget for next year will dedicate more than £1million extra to vulnerable people, with extra money set aside in particular for people with physical and learning disabilities and for people over 85. There are millions of pounds going to pay for home adaptations and assistive technology that will let people live more independent lives.
Our meals-on-wheels service has already been improved and there is no reference to any cuts to “lunch clubs” anywhere in the budget proposals.
Last year’s assessment by the government’s independent CSCI inspectorate gave Islington’s adult social services the highest possible rating for the first time ever.
Cllr John Gilbert
Lib Dem executive member for health and adult social services
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