Stuart Alexander’s Post

Transcript

Now we have a set of questions that have been brought to me by the public and really vectors and we are gonna kick off with the first question from Zoe. I will give you a little indication of what I think about these questions before they are answered. But we are going to kick off with Zoe. Yes. So what specific plans do you have to address affordable housing issues in Guildford and ensure that residents have access to suitable and affordable accommodations? Well, Guildford, I've been very open over the last few years. About development in Guildford, specially the town centre and the need for more housing within the town centre to match the needs of the future. And there seems to be a good ten year plan for that. But one of the things that really upsets me is how do young people expect to live in this town? Social housing is one thing that has upset me personally. I sort of handed back the keys to my mum's council flat. She sadly passed away in December. I'm sad to say that that house is a three bedroom. House and still emptying Belfield so it's something I feel quite strongly about so I'm very interested to hear your views Zoe and so I'm going to start a little bit with how we've kind of got here, which is that governments of all colours, you know we have failed since 1970s building new homes and that we've had right to buy and what's happened there has then been that people have bought their homes on right to buy in those homes haven't been replaced and there's been opportunities to change that but that hasn't changed so I'm going to. Start with this saying one of the things that are Dems want to do is actually on right to buy. Give councils the power to say no, we're gonna stop right to buy because actually we need to build more homes. We need to keep homes in the social housing sector. I'm really proud of the fact that as Lib Dems we have a plan for 150,000 new social housing a year. That's a really powerful statement about where our commitments lie to enabling people to have affordable housing. And I'm also unashamedly pro housing, but I always say that that comes with. Thing that we have to have, you know, the road infrastructure, we have to have the education, we have to have the health that goes with that. You can't just build homes and expect magically all of those things to appear or be sorted. And so the other thing I'd say is that is a local element to it. No, I would if I was the MP. Part of my job will be supporting the council to build more homes, but also challenging them when they don't get it right. But of course there is a big national picture in this. And one of the challenges is that national planning rules don't always enable us to make sure that, for example, in the in the case of affordable housing, that the 40% target for affordable housing actually gets built out. So I'd love to be Guilford. P and be able to support Guildford to get the housing it needs thank you Zoe over to you Angela thanks very much dude. So that's without a shadow of a doubt cause we've got a a local plan which was updated in 2019 and is due to provide 14,000 homes. What I want to do is say that new homes coming in isn't going to actually make homes more affordable in Guildford. I've seen very few policies that actually bring down the cost of housing and. More homes might give people places to live, but it's not going to make them more affordable. In fact, I think the whole notion of affordable housing is is wrong. 80% cost of what a an average house is in Guildford is still a huge amount of money for people. So the thing that we can do is make it easier for people to get out onto the housing market in the 1st place. We can do that by making sure that the economy is in a good position, making sure that people are being paid more with raised the national living wage recently. They also make sure that people can keep more money in their pocket when particular is that they can get a mortgage and save up for a 5% deposit. And what we want to do is scrap stamp duty on the 1st ��425,000. That would make quite a big difference to a first time buyer. It's the global financial crash in the late sort of the 2030 that's been really hard. So we've got we're in a position now where banks can start to loosen up some of the restrictions that they've got. So that people can get a mortgage. But on social housing here in Guildford, I'm really shocked by what's going on. I've had to deal with over 500 housing cases for constituents since I've been elected and the homes are sitting empty. And I think we've got a problem with regulation here in Guildford and something we've probably got to look at over the rest of the country. Homes have got to be to a really good standard so we can't have mold and damp, but we shouldn't be ripping up flooring every time somebody moves house. And there are a lot of people who want to just get in, get a roof over their head and they're happy to do a little bit of work to bring a council health up to spec and they want to have the freedom to do that. And at the moment the councillors is stopping that. We've also had money going missing at the council 13, 000,000 lbs as disappeared on one single electrical contract. That's just simply not good. Enough for the people of Guildford and taxpayers. So there needs to be some common sense injected into the council. And the other thing is there was about ��2.3 million of right to buy receipts that came back into the council that got returned to central government rather than being invested right here in Guildford. I mean, come on Guildford Borough Council, let's just sort it out. Thank you, Angela. Over to you, Sam. Yeah. Missed a rent payment nearly half of all local people renting and owning who owning a home couldn't always afford to put the heating on when they were cold. I'm one of 0 carbon Guildford surveyors for the heat scheme. We go to people's homes with thermal camera, show them where their homes losing heat and advisor on how they can how they can fix that. Sometimes we can give them some measures to do that as well. And I've seen in Guildford some some really bad homes clearly affecting people's health, you know, mold up the walls. People saying they can't afford heating the the damp and the cold and yeah the mold causing health problems. Ultimately the problem is that housing currently is geared towards maximizing profit for developers and speculators. It's not towards providing the homes that people actually change that to make housing and planning to meet local needs sustainably, not private profits will stop the loss of social housing by ending right supply quality social homes a year and we'll also give power councils the. Power to take vacant buildings back into our community use. We're bringing rent controls and we'll end no fault evictions so you can't be kicked out for no reason or just so a landlord can hike the rent up. And we also need to make existing homes fit for for living and we'll make sure that all homes are insulated. That will cut bills, help us end fuel poverty altogether. It stops those health problems, saves the NHS up to ��600 million a year. It creates good green jobs. There's, you know, there's a huge list of positives from something that's relatively cheap and relatively quick to do. And yeah, obviously these homes need to be within a 15 minute walk of, of the services and facilities and the green spaces. That help us actually build real communities. Fantastic Sam. Over to you, Sarah. Thanks June. So we've heard lots already about the things that we need to do in order to increase the number of homes that we've got, because fundamentally we don't have enough affordable homes because we haven't built enough houses. So like the Lib Dems, like the Greens, we've got even more ambitious targets to build over the course of the next Parliament, 1.5 million homes. And with the greatest respect, I think the big difference is that we're likely to have a Labour government who's able to implement that policy and we're going to change within the first. 100 days, the national planning framework to reintroduce mandatory targets for house building to really underpin that. So that's the first thing more homes really make really embed it in our planning frameworks. Second thing that we're gonna do is we're gonna, this sounds a bit technical, but geeky as it is, it's really important. We're gonna strengthen Section 106, which is the piece of legislation that requires developers to live up to their commitments to local authorities around the percentage of affordable housing that they're going to build around building shops and schools and all of those those good things. And at the moment, too many developers, including in Guildford, wriggle out of those commitments. So we are going to strengthen the teeth of Section 106 to hold developers to account. For building those affordable homes that they've committed to in the 1st place. So there's all of that national stuff which is critical and we're gonna move on fast. And in Guildford, I think there's two really big local things that as your Labour MP, I would be tackling from from day one in Guildford. And as already mentioned, one of them, we have to hold the Lib Dem Council to account for their failings on managing the housing maintenance budgets. Why? Because if we can't upgrade our empty homes to get them back into very interested in how Zoe is a Lib Dem MP would hold to account the Lib Dem Council for doing that. So that's one thing I think is critical locally. The second thing that I'm really interested in is why are we not bringing to life the Guildford Master Plan, which has got powerful plans for bringing in private investment into the town centre to revamp brownfield sites and develop loads of affordable homes in the town centre. If I was your Labour MP I would make that a huge priority. So those are the things I would do. Thanks Jeff.