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By Ian Dipple 29/02 Updated: 29/02 14:32
Buy photos » Shadow Housing Minister Jack Dromey talks housing with Rebecca Blake, Redditch Labour Party spokeswoman, Becky Green, Rylan Cutler, five months, and Nathan Cutler. Picture by Marcus Mingins 0912003MMR1
A ROW has broken out over how to deal with the borough's housing crisis after Labour's Shadow Housing Minister branded plans to begin re-building council homes in Redditch as 'not the solution'.
The Standard exclusively revealed last week how for the first time in over 30 years the borough council plans to build its own homes on land it already owns.
Jack Dromey MP visited the Co-operative Homes development in Walton Close in Winyates last Thursday (February 23) to discuss housing issues with residents and ignited the row by refusing to back the scheme, insisting working with social housing providers would deliver more homes at a faster rate.
Speaking to the Standard he said: "It doesn't go far enough and won't deliver the number of homes needed.
"The Labour Party wants to work with housing associations and private developers to build the homes people need.
"I don't pose one form of tenure against another - we need more homes for people to buy and rent. Not everybody wants to live in a council house so while council homes are important, so are housing associations, so are homes for people that want to rent or privately buy."
Rebecca Blake, Redditch Labour Parliamentary spokeswoman, waded into the debate by attacking the Conservatives for slashing the 7,000 target for new house building in the borough while 3,500 people were on the council's waiting list.
"We need a significant house building programme in Redditch and the Government could afford to build 25,000 affordable homes by repeating the bankers bonus tax."
But council leader Carole Gandy said they were already working with social housing providers - including two schemes in Church Hill - but they were struggling to get finance as the Homes and Communities Agency had allocated all its cash to provide affordable homes for the next four years.
"I would agree it's not an answer, it's just we are wanting to contribute to what we see is the need for social housing and one of the reasons is developers will come along and put what they think is right for an area not necessarily what is needed," she said.
"The housing target will be set in the next few weeks but it won't be 7,000 because I have always said while we have an obligation to those on the waiting list, we also have an obligation to those residents who already live here and I have no intention of concreting over the whole of Redditch.
"Even if we built 7,000 houses they wouldn't all be affordable, which is why while we have got some money set aside and land already identified as surplus we want to build council houses, so people on the housing list can get those houses."
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