Housing

Fighting to give everyone a decent & affordable home

WHAT WE’VE DONE

• Persuaded Labour leadership to give more help to renters by appointing a Tenants’ Champion.
• Convinced the Council to sign up to End Our Cladding Scandal’s 10-point plan, despite the Conservative group's opposition.
• Attempted to change planning rules to turn the Virgin Active site into a Community Land Trust to access grant funding to provide affordable housing for key workers - rather than private profit for developers.
• Forced an emergency scrutiny meeting on uncovering secret plan to dissolve Council’s building company after it spent £2m without laying a single brick.
• Proposed a scheme to meet the then current 40% affordable homes target - voted down by Labour, despite Council repeatedly achieving only 13% affordable housing.

WHAT WE’LL DO

• Achieve the new 50% affordable homes target by adopting robust affordability and viability criteria.
• Turn the Virgin Active site and land owned by Council’s former building company into Community Land Trusts.
• Provide real support for renters, through our new Tenants’ Champion scheme, by learning lessons from Richmond Council’s successful experience.
• Bring empty homes back into use to cut our temporary housing waiting list by up to 20%.
• Start prosecuting rogue landlords.
• Work nationally to end cladding and leasehold abuses.
• End the Council's practice of offering social housing more than 90 mins from Merton.