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New housing strategy needs targets
• ON July 16 Islington executive member Barbara Smith launched Islington’s Housing Strategy 2009-2014. Mr Patrick Odling-Smee, director of housing services, proudly presented the result of 18 months’ work before the Islington Housing Network and delegates from other London boroughs, the Greater London Authority and two dozen other statutory and voluntary sector organisations.
The strategy is of utmost political and social importance:
44 per cent of Islington’s households live in social housing. Anything that affects social housing has an impact on about half Islington’s population.
The council recognises how important housing is for all; hence the breadth and width of the new strategy that not only encompasses bricks and mortar, but places the people who live in, and sometimes endure, Islington’s social its core. The strategy’s evidence base is laden with statistics that reflect the reality of the eighth most impoverished borough in the country.
Cold, hard statistics justify the council’s ambition and foresight that aims to reduce the levels of deprivation of the council’s and other social landlords’ tenants.
Unfortunately for all, the strategy lacks a fundamental element of any serious strategy or action plan – measurable target, numbers and percentages, to be achieved within a specific time frame.
Of the five main objectives and 62 action points listed, only one action point refers to an objective metric that the council can be held accountable for. As it stands, Islington’s Housing Strategy 2009-2014 is a but a glossy catalogue of good intentions at best, or an ill-conceived political pamphlet at worst.
Would council leader Terry Stacy instruct his executive member for housing, Cllr Smith, and officers to put meat to the bones and make everybody under his leadership accountable?
I invite Cllr Stacy to set specific targets to the strategy and announce them publicly.
Richard Schunemann
Chair, Andover Tenants and Residents’ Association
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