The Tory planning muddle

This week, the leader of Wandsworth Council chose the distinctly unfestive message of planning as his last contribution to the SW15 website.

In a post he should have titled "The Nightmare Before Christmas" he welcomed the lack of planning restrictions that enabled him and his colleagues - on a whipped vote in full council - to push through the massive skyscrapers proposed for the Ram Brewery in central Wandsworth. He went on to write:

"In a recession this pragmatic approach is even more critical. We support the Mayor's move away from rigid housing targets."

Anyone with half an ounce of foresight might have thought that in a global economic downturn, with the potential for thousands of homes being repossessed in the coming year we need to boost the amount of affordable housing for rent in Putney. The Conservatives clearly lack even that half ounce. Let's be clear: the Conservative opposition to affordable housing has nothing to do with pragmatism or making sure our patch weathers the recession: it's opposition to the sort of people they believe live in affordable housing.

And that narrow-minded, short-termism is damaging the quality of life of local people: both those who might hope to be housed in the affordable homes Cllr Lister has negotiated away, or the rest of us who will soon live in an area dominated by tower blocks and skyscrapers.

This is Conservatism at its worst. It starts with failure to plan properly. This manifests itself in the approval of massively inappropriate overdevelopment which the Putney Society, Wandsworth Society and Battersea Society have all spoken out against. It develops into the abandonment of the council's social responsibility to house those not able to get or remain on the housing ladder. And it ends with a borough transformed beyond repair but local Conservatives smug in the knowledge that some of their pet projects have been paid for by the developers as the price for getting their overdevelopment applications approved.

This is not local leadership. It's the abbrogation of leadership. It's up to you decide whether you are content to allow your current representatives to wreck Wandsworth or, instead, elect me as MP to ensure far stronger, clear leadership.