New council homes must be a priority PHOTO

READERS’ OF THE WEEK

It was good to see our MP in the Gazette highlighting the need for more social housing.

I guess people driving down the Sturry Road, to go to Currys PC World, or the car showrooms, are not aware that in the streets to the left and right four out of every 10 children living there are in households in real poverty. That is, according to the government’s own judgment, households whose income does not match the average cost of everything: heating, essential clothes, food, rent.what really tips these families over the edge in Canterbury (and this goes for large areas of Wincheap, Barton and St Stephen’s Wards as well) is the rent most have to pay.

Of course, all these children could be taken out of poverty by the government providing a decent level of financial help, for example in disability payments and working tax credits. But the council itself could almost halve the number of children in poverty in Northgate Ward by building council houses, for renting at an amount that low-income families can afford.

The council is allowing thousands of private market houses to be built over the next 10 years. Set against that, and against the fact that there are 2,400 families on the council’s Housing Needs Register, the statement that the plans for the future are for converting just 63 flats and houses into homes for social renting is a totally inadequate response.

It is surely time for the building of social housing to be made the number one priority in the council’s capital programme.the council has made some large borrowings over recent years—for the Marlowe Theatre, which I wholeheartedly approve of, and for buying Whitefriars, about which I have serious reservations. Now surely is the time to put the pressing need of so many of our fellow residents first, and build homes they can afford. Otherwise poverty will continue to take its toll, in the daily struggle to make ends meet, in deciding which bill to pay, whether to risk eviction by delaying paying the rent, or to have to use the food bank.

such widespread concern.

Meanwhile, strange that the leader of the council can just waive aside ‘health and safety’ issues, yet the red post box in Station Road West at the exit from the car park is closed due to health and safety grounds; it is firmly on the pavement.