Local Elections: Delivering homes that people need

We need a huge increase in the supply of affordable social housing.

Many people are crying out for a secure home.

Here in Peterborough, easy to heat, affordable homes are out of reach for too many people.

The 2021 census showed that there were 3,395 empty properties in Peterborough. A lot of houses are empty for good reasons, but some have been empty for over six months and the council could use their powers to get these back into use.

We need councillors and the national government to work together to deliver the homes people need.

Speculators and developers are allowed to chase the biggest profits and ignore local needs. Too many villages and towns have seen large-scale developments take place without the community infrastructure being expanded alongside them. GP surgeries, bus services, cycling and walking networks and nurseries and schools are needed where there are large new developments.

In Peterborough, we have secured an eco-homes project which aims to provide temporary and social housing. However this type of project needs upscaling.

Currently, developers are being allowed to build houses which local people often can’t afford. They are failing to ensure local services get the investment they need.

Up and down the country, people are experiencing the same problems as people here in Peterborough – homes that are unaffordable to buy, unaffordable to rent and unaffordable to heat. There is a generation of people who are trapped in the private rental market by spiralling rents which bear no relationship to incomes.

Greens would give councils the power to bring in rent controls in areas where the housing market is overheated. We would also place much stricter controls on the type of new homes being built to include more affordable and social housing.

Everyone deserves a place that they can call home.

Our Right Homes, Right Place, Right Price Charter will deliver the change we want to see across the housing sector and create fairer, greener communities.

The policies the Green Party would introduce to help councils increase the supply of affordable housing

include:-

•Providing councils with the funding to meet their needs for affordable social housing, and lifting the overly restrictive rules on council borrowing for house building.

This would ensure that at least an extra 150,000 council homes are made available per year through a mix of new build, refurbishment, conversions and buying up existing homes.

•We would end the Right to Buy scheme, enabling local authorities to keep council homes available and affordable in the community for good

•Taming the private rental market through rent controls in places where the rental market is overheated.

This would ensure fair rents as well as ending no-fault evictions.

•Creating a ‘community right to buy’, giving councils, housing associations and community housing groups first refusal to buy certain properties when they come onto the market.

This would include former social housing bought under Right to Buy, properties in need of energy efficiency improvements and any property left empty for an unacceptably long time.

With the cost of living crisis, the climate crisis and housing crisis, more and more people are looking for a fresh political voice, it has never been more important to get Greens elected.

Please join us (https://join.greenparty.org.uk/)and vote Green on May 2nd