No excuse now

As the Evening Standard reported last week, councils like Wandsworth now have the power to take factors other than just pure housing need into account when allocating what's left of our local council house stock.

Need should always be one of the most important considerations in allocating housing, but the fact that it has been the sole concern has sent our council estates into a spiral of decline; increasing deprivation and entrenching poverty and social dysfunction.

That's not just a problem in itself - it's a problem that leads to deep resentment among those who've waited years - unsuccessfully - to be rehoused, have a high priority for getting moved, but have to watch as newer, more "needy" cases join the queue ahead of them.

As an example of this, I've been trying to get a family rehoused who are currently in a three bed flat but need a five, or at very least a four bed house. They have enough points that when I first got in touch on their behalf they were eleventh in line for rehousing. That should easily be enough to get rehoused as many more than 11 homes become vacant every year. But over a year on, when I last checked they were TWELTH; simply because new households determined to be in greater need keep being pushed in by the Conservatives ahead of them.

It's simply unfair. I'm not going to speculate on the worthiness of those more recent households getting preferential treatment becasue of their circumstances but what I do think is that such a household could spend a few months in a smaller-than-needed home while those who've waited much longer in such substandard housing get the size of home they need first.

It's why we in Labour changed the law to give councils like Tory Wandsworth the choice to place fairness at the heart of housing. And it's why we've also called locally for a "points escalator" that gives those on the waiting list extra points the longer they wait - which guarantees a home to everyone on the list sooner or later. That's a much fairer way.

But let's never forget that the reason we have housing waiting lists in the first place is because there aren't enough homes in Wandsworth - and the reason for that is because the Conservatives have sold off over half our homes locally: more than 32,000 in 1981, barely 16,000 today.

We need fairer allocations, but we need one heck of a lot more affordable homes as well.