Last Tuesday’s Council Meeting gave me the opportunity yet again to press the case for building more affordable housing in Reading and as anyone who has attended Planning Committee this year will confirm, I do take every opportunity to sound off on my hobbyhorse. But this is a really serious topic in Reading as elsewhere in South East England. Not only are we not building enough social housing, we are giving in to the developers at every turn and even meeting our own local policy requirements.
The Labour Administration were pushing through a motion attacking the chnages to the current planning legislation being proposed and saying how wonderful things would be under Labour. I responded to Cllr Ruhemann (Lead Councillor for Planning) as follows:
he seems to gloss over Labour’s magnificent record in promoting house building over 13 years in government and twenty something years as this council’s administration. His opening paragraph alludes to the terrible changes that will lead to a reduction in the number of affordable homes built by an uncaring government. He studiously ignores that pathetic record of this council, under his leadership, of building affordable housing in Reading.
Can he explain to the many young people living in privately rented accommodation in Reading, or still living at home into their 30’s, why, on his watch, the Planning Committee has unilaterally given up on the 50% target for affordable homes in any new development and why he thinks that if developers offer just 15 or 20% that is perfectly fine for the residents of Reading. After all, we are really short of 3 and 4 bedroom luxury houses to buy, we just cannot get enough modern 2 bedroom flats to rent from private landlords. 15 or 20% of affordable homes when we are building just 600 new houses in a year works out at 120 affordable units a year, a drop in the ocean as far as meeting current needs goes.
Can he explain to the 10,000 people on the council’s waiting list in Reading how much he thinks about them when every planning decision is being made?
What is the point of a motion like this castigating the government, developers, and planning policy in general when this Administration does not even take steps to stick to its own policy on social housing, the one thing that Reading Borough Council can do for itself, to follow its own policy and demand that developers build more affordable housing. How can you blame everyone else for the housing debacle in Reading when you don’t even apply your own policy?
Don’t ever believe Labour on housing or planning, they are all mouth and no trousers when it comes to planning for, or building, the homes that Reading needs.