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| Labour Fails on Council Housing |
Do you think that Southampton council housing should be prioritised for Southampton people?
We do, because Southampton residents do.
Yet, just two weeks after Labour's shallow and wide General Election win, Southampton Labour councillors voted to allow people who live outside Southampton to get equal priority with Southampton people who live in Southampton.
How do we know what residents think? Because we are residents too and we've asked them about it.
When Independent Candidate Andrew Pope asked residents during the recent Shirley by-election (which the Liberal Democrat candidate won), residents agreed that Southampton residents should be prioritised for council housing over those that do not live here.
It would seem to be common sense, that those who have contributed to Southampton and who have local connections should receive something back for their loyalty to our City.
The Council Cabinet, composed entirely of Labour councillors, voted in July to water down the 10-year-long policy introduced in 2014 under Labour's Local Election Manifesto.
This Labour Manifesto was co-ordinated by Andrew Pope, a year before he resigned from the Labour Party in disgust at the performance of the Labour-run Council and its broken promises, including over its failure to build the council housing it promised in 2012.
As reported here on the Southampton Independents website, Labour has built a paltry amount of council-owned housing, breaking another promise. It has had over a decade to do so.
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| Andrew Pope, speaking in 2017 to the BBC |
Andrew says:
"One of the Local Election Manifesto pledges in 2014 was to make the local connection essential for anyone wanting to go on the housing waiting list, which at the time was huge. And it still is huge at around 8,000 according to the Council.
I pushed for this policy to be a pledge for Labour because I had listened to local residents in the Maybush, Millbrook and Redbridge areas that I represented as a councillor who felt that people from outside Southampton were getting priority instead. And Southampton residents elsewhere felt the same, I had learned from listening to colleagues when co-ordinating the Manifesto.
I felt strongly that it was important to address this perception and to actually give priority to our own people. I made the case to my Labour colleagues at the time.
Sadly, there was resistance from some in the Southampton Labour group of councillors and also amongst Southampton Labour Party members. Some of them even called it a 'racist' policy.
But then some of them, especially the ones who have poor debating skills, used that word a lot when they could not make a coherent or reasoned argument, for example in the 2016 Council debate about the EU Referendum.
The policy is definitely not racist. It is about contribution to our City, including those who have paid council tax, and rewarding that commitment to our City by its residents. It is called the 'contributory principle' that the Liberal William Beveridge advocated for in his famous reports after World War II that led to the modern 'welfare state'.
I can exclusively reveal that a Freedom of Information request that I put in has confirmed that Southampton Labour councillors, and Southampton City Council itself under Labour rule, have capitulated to those in Southampton and Westminster who do not stand up for Southampton and its people.
Not only did they vote to water down the 'local connection' policy.
The Council's Freedom of Information response was that they did not know how often they enforced the local connection policy, because they did not have this information.
Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the Council have not been enforcing this policy, and all and sundry are allowed to get council housing.
Southampton people are not getting priority.
Even worse, according to the report of the Cabinet meeting by the Local Democracy Reporter, Jason Lewis, the Tories have gone along with the Labour Cabinet vote - what kind of opposition is this?
It is yet another broken promise by Labour and its councillors and another case of Labour or Tory and the same old story.
I have written to the Cabinet Member for Housing Cllr Frampton, and the Leader of the Council Cllr Fielker, asking for an explanation. I have also asked the Tory Group Leader Cllr Baillie why they support this policy u-turn."
