Letter: The Council’s Housing Record Is Nothing to Brag About

Published on: 21 Mar, 2019
Updated on: 21 Mar, 2019

From Ben Paton

In response to: The Borough Council Is Now Even More Ambitious to Provide Affordable Housing

Here are the numbers of social housing sold versus built.

Listed by financial year are the numbers of council properties sold, via “right to buy”, and the number of new council affordable homes provided.

Year	Properties sold	Properties provided
2005/6	6	0
2006/7	17	0
2007/8	14	0
2008/9	7	0
2009/10	12	0
2010/11	14	0
2011/12	8	0
2012/13	11	0
2013/14	21	0
2014/15	29	19

The shortage of social housing is a government created problem. The borough council has merely followed central government policy and sold these social assets at discounts of some 35% plus, ie at much less than replacement cost. And it has not been replacing them.

There’s not much to brag about.

Responses to Letter: The Council’s Housing Record Is Nothing to Brag About

Keith Witham Reply

March 21, 2019 at 7:07 pm

Your list ended at 2014. Funny that!

How about, Conservative Guildford’s “wicked Tory Council” manages and lets a wide range of 5,200 homes at social housing rents and are reducing those rents for the fourth year in a row, by 1% in 2019-20, helping those on low incomes. At the same time it will spend £5.1 million maintaining and improving tenants’ homes?

Plus it is investing £74 million in building a mix of new homes for sale or affordable rent across our borough in the next four years.

And it is already building on a number of sites – including:

– Guildford Park Road on previous open-air car park site (160 homes, 64 for affordable rent)

– Apple Tree pub site in Park Barn (18 homes, all for affordable rent with nine fully wheelchair accessible)

– Ladymead site near the new Fire Station (12 homes, all for affordable rent)

– other smaller scale previously-developed sites (21 homes across five sites, all for affordable rent).

By carefully managing its housing stock and finances, Conservative GBC are now in a strong position to provide and build a mix of homes to meet the different needs across our local communities. Every person matters and the council, rightly, continues to invest in providing affordable social housing.

They are also increasing the homes provided by North Downs Housing, the council-owned market housing landlord company. The company is intending to build new homes to complement the properties it is acquiring to let, all with a focus on keeping homes to rent available to those struggling to own a home.

So…. hardly “nothing “ except to those who have closed minds.

Keith Witham is the Conservative county councillor for Worplesdon
Ben Paton Reply

March 22, 2019 at 1:31 pm

I should point out that Cllr Witham misquotes me.

I did not say that there was ‘nothing’ to brag about. I wrote, ‘not much’ to brag about.

The numbers justify that comment. And at least I came up with numbers, unlike Cllr Witham.

Perhaps he would like to inform the public by supplying the most recent figures himself? I suspect that they make the same point I made.
David Smith Reply

March 22, 2019 at 8:35 pm

I think the writer forgets (possibly due to his constant desire to attack GBC) that a lot of affordable homes have been provided in recent years on developments the council actually approved.

My first home was shared ownership in Boxgrove Gardens. This scheme was approved by GBC in 2008 where 14 part buy, part rent apartments were built along with tens of council houses. There have also been numerous affordable rent apartments / shared ownership in Walnut Tree Close in three different schemes and the Waitrose site has a mixture of both (a scheme I recall a lot of these pressure groups tried to stop).

The council works hard with developers to ensure they deliver affordable homes, Shanley had their Cricketers View scheme refused by GBC as it did not provide any affordable units (it sadly was approved on appeal).

GBC doesn’t have extensive land holdings so it’s not realistic to expect the council to deliver hundreds of homes each year and is that even a problem if developers deliver them instead? Probably a most cost-effective solution for the taxpayer.
- ben paton Reply
  
  March 24, 2019 at 11:21 am
  
  Mr Smith appears not to understand the difference between social housing and so called ‘affordable’ homes. It appears that Mr Smith’s uncritical approach is guided by a desire to supporth the Council regardless of the facts.