The opportunity for new affordable homes

The global financial crisis has transformed the economic environment: nowhere more so than for Britain's building industry.

Had absurd massive private housing plans like those for Putney Place and Danebury Avenue not been unlikely before the credit crunch, in it's aftermath they look completely unachievable. There is not the market and developers lack the funds to see such schemes through.

I've been arguing long and hard since I became Putney's candidate that what our area needs desperately is a dramatic increase in affordable homes: especially affordable homes to rent. We've lost over half our rented council homes locally in the past 25 years: there were over 32,000 in 1981; there are now barely 16,000.

For the past two decades, the only way affordable homes continued to be built was when a handful got bolted onto planning permissions for vastly larger developments of private housing. That is no longer an option.

Instead, Wandsworth Council needs to start working closely with Housing Associations to dramatically boost affordable housing development. Not just because we desperately need the new affordable homes, but also to help the economy and keep builders working.

And they can start by acquiring Arton Wilson House on Roehampton Lane from the NHS. Arton Wilson House was, until a few weeks ago, housing for nurses and other medical workers, but the NHS has declared it surplus to requirements and it is now empty and awaiting demolition.

Arton Wilson House is public land that must remain in public hands - and meet the affordable housing need locally. This is an opportunity the Conservative Council must not squander.