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Build up the pressure: advice from Emily Thornberry MP and housing minister, Ian Austin, pictured outside Moorfields School |
Call for action to cut homes waiting list
Housing minister urges cash bids after seeing plight of families
HOUSING minister Ian Austin this week urged the Town Hall to bid for every government fund available in a bid to cut down the borough’s 13,000-strong housing waiting list.
Islington South MP Emily Thornberry gave Mr Austin a tour on Tuesday of St Luke’s estate in Finsbury, introducing him to families suffering from overcrowding.
He spoke to 24-year-old Louise Murphy, who shares a two-bed flat with her sister Lacey, and four others babies.
He later visited Zula Kiasi, whose cramped, three-bed, flat is too small to accommodate her daughter who suffers from cystic fibrosis, a teenage son and a second daughter with diabetes.
The minister also visited the site of Moorfields School, which Islington Council sold off to Southern Housing for £8.5million in March this year following a long campaign to keep the building in public hands. The Town Hall had deemed the school surplus to requirements.
Mr Austin said: “What I’ve seen today demonstrates the huge need for additional investment in housing.
“Zula’s story is heartbreaking. Nobody who sees that could fail to see the need for additional investment in housing.
“We’ve made extra spending available and where there’s money available for local authorities to build it’s really important that they bid for that.
“Local people should be putting the council under huge pressure to bid for every single scheme.”
Ms Thornberry, who wants to ensure Southern Housing use the Moorfields site for affordable housing, said: “Other local authorities have publicly-owned land, MOD, old railway land, all kinds of things. But we don’t have that. There has to be a very good reason for every square inch of publicly-owned land in Islington that gets sold. Moorfields School is an excellent site, which was owned by the public and I think it’s been frittered away. I want to make sure they build social housing. I’m not going to let this drop.”
A Southern Housing spokeswoman said: “We are a housing association and as such the properties that we build will be a mixture of affordable rented and ownership tenures.” She said a public consultation will be launched soon and the precise number and mix of homes has not yet been determined. |
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