Opinion: Empty homes can help housing crisis

These homes, as he also stated, were built to last.

Rather than have them be a continuing eyesore, the council could have spent a bit of money on fixing them up and making them available to local residents.

Given the continuing housing crisis in our city, this would have been a sensible use of money.

Alternatively, we could have put them to use by community groups, who are doing excellent work in supporting residents in the absence of government aid.

Instead, these properties were left to rot, and ended up being used by drug users and others; the fire was an inevitable result of neglect and poor policy.

I don’t get a strong sense that housing is high on this government’s priorities.

We are still awaiting their financial statement; we’ve already been led to believe that it will contain tax rises and spending cuts in a belated effort to undo the damage done by the Truss / Kwarteng budget.

Make no mistake, Truss and Kwarteng did do enormous damage: imagine someone who goes out on a spending spree using your credit card. Would you trust them to be prudent in future without strict supervision?

This next budget will be a representation of that type of oversight, probably deeper and more severe than it needed to be because the Tories surrendered our credibility with the markets.

That means less money for schools, hospitals, roads, police and yes, housing. In which case, we are going to have to rely less on large projects and make do with what we have.

Councillor Jamil is absolutely right: we should look at derelict properties n our area and see how many can be converted to social housing or other useful purposes.

It is not a complete answer, but in an era of such limited funds, we should look to do what we can. It’s worth it if only a few families can cause our bill for B&Bs to fall, and they are adequately housed.

Furthermore, as Councillor Jamil noted, the homes on Cromwell Road are an eyesore: what message do we send to people who visit our city if they see boarded up houses in Peterborough’s centre? Surely there are benefits in making our common home a much more attractive place.

It feels like the current administration has little room for such thoughts.

We’ve come to expect a lack of grand vision, an absence of attention to detail, served up with a large dollop of incompetence.

This is nothing new.

But something as simple as fixing up housing stock we already have, ensuring that there are paying tenants living there, and avoiding destruction of property should be within their capabilities to assess.

Having said that, apparently not.

Until such time as their perceptions widen or they are removed from office, who can say what else will go up in smoke?