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St Albans slammed for housing provision

1:00am Friday 19th March 2010 in


THE district council is under fire from the homeless charity Shelter, which has labelled it one of the worst in England for providing affordable housing.

The charity's Housing League table, launched today, shows St Albans is delivering only ten per cent of the affordable homes that are needed and is ranked 249 out of 323 English local authorities for affordable housing delivery.

Chief executive Campbell Robb said: “These figures are extremely worrying. With 1,596 households on the housing waiting list in St Albans, the council must work far harder to ensure more desperately needed affordable homes are provided if it ever hopes to meet the housing needs of the local population. 

“Independent experts commissioned by the council say 643 new affordable homes need to be built each year in St Albans, but an average of only 63 have been delivered in the last year, leaving a shortfall of 580 homes per year.”

Comments(4)

FatBob says...
10:41am Fri 19 Mar 10

Hundreds of so-called "affordable homes" have been built in St Albans in recent years by private developers via planning obligations enforced by government legislation.

So - who's occupying them? People in greatest need or clever greedy types who know how to manipulate the system, making a profit by sub-letting to people not on the council's acute housing list?

Instead of blaming a soft target like St Albans Council, Shelter should look at how the allocation of public housing is being abused. But they wouldn't do that, would they? Shelter gets big handouts from central government, so very unlikely to bite the fat hand that feeds them.

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Roma Mills says...
2:39pm Fri 19 Mar 10

Not sure where FatBob gets his numbers from - in the past five years less than 300 'affordable homes' have been built in this District and that includes subsidised house purchase schemes, for example shared ownership. As there are 238 families currently waiting for rehousing into larger properties and over 1,600 on the housing waiting list, this relatively low level of provision is inadequate to meet the housing needs of local people. There may be some dishonest types, sub-letting - but that's not the cause of the problem. The District Council is the housing authority responsible for identifying need and making sure that it is met but the administration prefers to invest housing capital in leisure schemes. No wonder we have problems.

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busbee says...
5:05pm Fri 19 Mar 10

fat cats like fatbob should remember they were thin and young once. I only had to pay a few hundred pounds for my first house, and in fact you could buy a piece of building land for the cost of a second hand car; I know, I did it, and when I discovered I couldn't afford to build on it, I found my salary entitled me to a mortgage on a five bedroomed house!

You simply have to be young these days to be priced out of the market.

Some people do sublet Council Houses, but if they buy an affordable home and then let it out, that only suggests we should means test their savings.

But remember the only 'victims' of affordable housing are landowners who are obliged to lower their expectations for the profit they make on their land.

I really wonder if we should means test the savings of affordable home purchasers just to protect the profits of the super-rich.

A 'real' capitalist would want to encourage the young to save and set up in business.

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TonyL says...
8:32pm Fri 19 Mar 10

We are all waiting for the response of our district councillors to being exposed in this way.
No doubt they will try to sidestep any accountabillity .
Over to you Cllr Brazier , National recognition at last !

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