We don’t want more affordable housing in town ‘Council gets no money’ – development boss
ROCHDALE’S development tsar has said the town does not want anymore affordable housing as “the council gets no money from it”.
Paul Ormerod, who heads up the councilbacked Rochdale Development Agency, said the town needed “unaffordable housing” to drive up tax receipts and bring in Manchester commuters.
Speaking at a Conservative Party conference event he said: “People talk a lot about affordable housing, no we want unaffordable housing.
“That’s because 83pc of the borough’s housing stock is actually in council tax bands A and B, the council gets no money from it.”
He added: “We’ve got a big initiative around the local station where we are deliberately creating homes which are expensive for the area.
“We can see how the centre of Manchester has been revived, 25 years ago nobody lived here now 80,000 people do in very expensive apartments.
“We want some of them to come and live round
Rochdale station where they can get it for half the price and the cost of a 15 minute train journey.”
Rochdale MP Tony Lloyd disagreed with the analysis, he said: “No, no Rochdale needs affordable housing as well.
“There’s a huge housing waiting list in Rochdale, many people are badly housed and they are the ones who can’t buy their way out of the situation.
“We need to see mixture of housing across the piece.”
He added: “Paul is a decent guy and I suspect he doesn’t believe that we should throw those on waiting lists to the wolves.”
Rochdale council’s cabinet member for the economy John Blundell agreed that there needed to be a “balance”, but said there was a focus on “aspirational housing” in the town. He said: “Our approach is to accelerate delivery of a range of housing options across the borough, including affordable properties, larger family homes and town centre apartments to meet our increased housing needs. The fact is over 70pc of our valuing stock is in band A and B making the vast majority of housing in Rochdale affordable. We need certain types of housing stock, and in particular social housing stock, like bungalows for the elderly and started homes, but the fact is we want to build aspirational housing.
“This is so Rochdale residents who do well in life don’t feel the need to move to south Manchester, which is too often the case. That isn’t good for the residents they leave behind.”