Constituency Matters

Rupa Huq, MP for Ealing Central and Acton

IT USED to be said that an Englishman’s home is his castle, but the mixed communities of our suburbs – on the edges of cities – are changing from stereotypical twitching net curtain land.

Targets that local authorities face and the deregulation of planning means that castles in the air are springing up such as the 55-storey monster approved by Ealing council’s planning committee for North Acton.

Tall buildings are changing the two storey, low-density nature of suburban Ealing whose archetypal home is the humble semi.

With the capital girdled by green belt, literally the only way is up. One wonders how many more “vibrant quarters”, as the youth-oriented marketing has it, Ealing can take when it has an ageing population – a majority will soon be over 60. Those in social housing often want rehousing to the ground floor because of mobility issues. Those in comparatively sizeable semis, even if they recognise the need to downsize, choose to stick to them because new apartments are too small to have the grandchildren round to stay in.

An increasingly laissez faire attitude to all things planning has prevailed under the Conservatives. Market forces have changed housing from being a roof over ones head to an investment vehicle. Planning feels developer-rather than community-led. Multi-level buildings abound particularly around stations which Ealing and Acton are so blessed with. The private luxury units typically cross-subsidise the affordable bit each time. On the other side developers, particularly housing associations argue that pressures on them are manifold including addressing the climate/ environment/ carbon crisis as well as building stock to alleviate the housing crisis and now post-Grenfell fire safety compliance/ retrofitting.

The fundamental fabric of suburbia has many positive points. It was designed to combine the best of town and country boasting easy access to commute to the lure of city working with pleasant surroundings. Yet our suburbs are suffering.

So how to resolve this dilemma? The government needs to start a suburban taskforce.

It is high time for a suburban renaissance to unlock untapped potential. Re-shaping our suburbs from crumbling infrastructure including decaying high streets and older housing stock alongside hideous towers is not going to happen on its own without some systematic thinking.

Every region feels underinvested in. With the Tories newfound friends in the north, funding could easily end up bypassing Labour-voting London. I won’t allow this.

If you’d like to submit evidence to the enquiry other MPs and me are launching please email huqr@parliament.uk