The delivery of truly affordable housing is a contentious issue for Richmond Council. The current Liberal Democrat administration has the worst track record of building this type of housing across London. [1] [2]
Despite this, there has been a series of press releases from them celebrating ‘hundreds of affordable homes in the pipeline’. [3]
However, there is no way of verifying these figures because Richmond’s yearly statutory Authority’s Monitoring Report (AMR) is now two years out of date. [4] Their definition of genuinely affordable homes also needs to be examined as it includes shared ownership homes, which are out of reach for the thousands of residents on the Council’s housing waiting list who need social rent homes. This lack of up-to-date information makes it impossible to check the Liberal Democrats’ claims to discover how many new social rent homes have actually been completed. The reality is, thousands of residents on Richmond’s housing waiting list are waiting decades for a safe, secure home in the borough.
Mortlake and Barnes Common Councillor Niki Crookdake says: “One of my residents has been languishing in a damp and mouldy flat for over 26 years trying to move from a one-bedroom to a two-bedroom flat with her son, who is now a grown man. She was last shown a property in 2007. There there’s another family living in a severely cramped, unsuitable property with children aged eight to 19, whose medical conditions impacted by damp and mould. And they’re not the only family like that.“Then, what about residents who need to be moved into supported accommodation with nowhere to go because housing associations – to save the cost of having a manager on site – have converted supported living accommodation into ‘independent living’? Or the numerous other cases where medical needs fall on deaf ears?”
The experience of residents demonstrates the slow progress by the Liberal Democrats over the last eight years, while they have been in charge. For example, the mere seven per cent of affordable homes on the Stag Brewery site in Mortlake is the lowest level agreed in London. The Liberal Democrats need to adopt a more innovative approach and work with developers to increase the number of three-bedroom, social rent homes through direct investment and partnerships.
