The need for social housing

Owen Jones writing in The Independent today has summed up the need for a social house-building programme here. It is needed both to provide jobs quickly (and revitalise the economy) but also, just as importantly, to provide decent, affordable homes for the generations of young families who are otherwise confined to the vaguaries of the private rental sector. Our country has become a haven for unscrupulous landlords who have bought up large swathes of private housing to rent out and maximise the profit on. This includes many former council houses now used as an asset to be sweated by landlords who think nothing of forcing tennants to sign up to a commitment to pay future rents even after they have vacated a property so that the unscrupulous landlord can continue his profit stream even during a ‘vacant’ period on a property only let on a short term agreement.

Neither the government nor local councils are doing enough to provide affordable housing to thw millions looking for secure, affordable, homes in which to raise a family. We need to build our way out of this mess, and quickly.

Housing, benefits and a crisis

Many people seem to be working up a lather on the government’s proposal to reduce benefits to those who live in under-uitlised social housing. The aim of this proposal is to encourage small households that are living in large houses to swap with large families living in smaller houses. Given that there are around 1,000,000 overcrowded families looking for larger houses and some 2,000,000 smaller families or singles living in larger houses, you would have thought there might be some scope to swap people around.

However, trying to tackle this issue is fraught with problems, not least of which is people’s attachment to their house and to the community in which they live (and may have lived for a very long time), not everybody wants to uproot themselves when their sons and daughters leave home.
Social Housing
However the key issue in talking about social housing is the lack of new affordable housing coming into use. Had we been building at two or three times the current rate of affordable builds for the last decade or two, we probably would not have needed to tackle the issue of under-utilised houses, as the total stock would have been much bigger and the problem much smaller.

We simply need to build more housing that people can afford to live in and the current planning regime (and propsals in the pipeline) do not make this any more achievable. We need an emergemcy programme to get Britain building.

Parking on Grass Verges

Verge Parking 1a
Since we wrote in Council Topics about the council’s decision to go ahead with an experimental ban on parking on grass verges and pavements, both Meri and I have been contacted by quite a number of residents expressing support for this initiative and asking for their road to be included.

This is clearly an issue which many folk in Tilehurst feel strongly about and which has come through from residents’ surveys we have done in the past. I really hope that we can introduce the ban soon and enforce it. Once people start to receive warning letters from the council and possibly a few fines are handed out, I am sure motorists will think twice about parking on grass verges or blocking footpaths by parking on the pavement.

We have also had a few residents who want to plant flowers and shrubs on various grass verges. People do care about their environment and they do want it to be kept tidy (not necessarily pristine but just neat and tidy). This ban will help us reclaim our grass verges and get rid of the mud patches that are all to obvious at present.

Pothole, more potholes and yet more potholes

8 July 2012 Walnut Way
January and February seem to be the prime months for potholes appearing in our roads. Many of them appear after a winter cold snap freezes water in the tarmac. As water turns to ice it expands in volume and cracks the road surface. Now our roads have never been very good but the current state is worse than I can ever remember. Despite government grants to help pay the costs of effects of bad waether on our roads the council is still struggling to cope. I have certainly received numerous reports of new potholes from Tilehurst residents over the last two months.

Curently the council only orders repairs if a pothole is more than 2″ deep as they try to ensure that the worst potholes are filled in whilst not blowing all the cash on minor holes. The upshot of this policy is that we have numerous potholes that cause bumps to cars travelling over them (and are downright dangerous for cyclists and motorcyclists) and the overall look of our roads is shabby.

The answer would be to spend more on proper fixes and road resurfacing but this is not afforable in the current economic climate. Do keep reporting any new potholes, the council will repair the larger ones. In the meantime the only advice I can give is to drive carefully, and give up on low-slung sports cars.

Tilehurst Petrol Station Given 24 Hour Alcohol Licence

Earlier this evening the council’s Licensing Committee waved aside a letter of protest signed by 146 local Tilehurst residents and granted the owners an extension of their licence to sell alcohol 24 hours a day.

I spoke at the meeting and represented Tilehurst residents but despite my pleas the committee decided there was nothing wrong in opening a booze outlet in Tilehurst Village 24 hours a day.

The only concession made by the committee was to order the owners to keep the shop closed between 23:00 and 05:00 and to serve customers during these hours through a night hatch only.

The Licensing Committee was blind to the potential effects on the village, of late night rowdiness or the obvious open door to any corner shop to follow suit and open 24/7. I dread to think what the long term effects will be of one company’s desire to make a quick buck out of selling alcohol 24/7 in a residential neighbourhood.

More on Tilehurst Petrol Station

Was out with Meri this evening knocking on doors, talking to residents and gathering more signatures for our objection letter. We now have 146 signatures and I will hand them in to the council tomorrow.

We have now talked to lots of residents who live near to the petrol station and it is clear that the vast majority do not want to see the licence extended to 24/7.

Now we need to convince the Licensing Committee on 22 January.

24 hour alcohol licence for Tilehurst Petrol Station

Esso Petrol Station

The owners of Tilehurst Petrol Station in School Road have applied for an extension of their licience to sell alcohol 24 hours a day. This is not welcome news for Tilehurst residents where none of the existing retailers has a licence to sell alcohol 24 hours a day.

We have gone to a lot of trouble in recent years to tackle anti-social behaviour in Tilehurst, working in partnership with the Neighbourhood Police Team and council officers to make Tilehurst Village a safe place and to avoid creating any new focus where small crowds of people gather late at night to drink their lives away.

There are plenty of alcohol outlets in town and along the Oxford Road that are open 24 hours a day already and we do not need them in Tilehurst.

The licence application is due to be heard by the Licencsing Committee on 22 January.

I will keep you posted.

The Housing Crisis

Housing, or lack of it, is a huge national issue which no governemnt has been on top of over the last fifty years. Since the 1960s and the end of the post war boom years we have struggled to build enough new homes for people that need them. And since the Tories introduced the ‘right to buy’ which allows council and housing association tennants to buy homes that they have previously rented, the stock of available social housing simply does not keep up with demand. As more tennants have bought their homes so less and less are availble to house future families in need.

As a nation we have built some 110,000 houses over the last year, the lowest number of new houses built since the war and to put that in perspective we need to provide for 270,000 new households every year just to keep up with demand. But this is not the whole story, what is important is also the type of new homes we have built, not just the numbers. I have no figure for how many of those 110,000 new homes were built for social rents but I think we can safely assume it was a pitifully low number.

We have endless supplies here in Reading of two bedroom flats for well-off renters in the town centre and four bedroom executive homes in surrounding areas but where are the new homes for less well off tennants who are forced to rent privately and rely on housing benefits to pay the rent. In Reading we have over 10,000 people on waiting lists and we have managed to build around 100 new affordable homes last year.

Somehow we have a get developers to build affordable homes, not just homes to be snapped up by those who already own properties and will just rent out more houses and flats at sky high prices. The current planning regime does not allow local authorities to order developers to build affordable housing and the bulk of the income in previous years from ‘right to buy’ sales was not allowed to be spent on new housing so there is very little cash with which to pay for or subsidise new house building.

If developers could ever think of houses as a long term investment rather than a quick way to make money we might have a better chance of building houses for social rents but I see no signs of this happening and the present council’s actions (as opposed to their written policy) seems to be to give in to developers demands to build more executive homes and less and less sffordable housing. The council needs to demand more from developers.

We are in a crisis.