Greenwich Council housing plan for Eltham garage site
An area of land in Eltham has seen plans submitted for new council homes.
A total of 12 garages would be replaced by seven homes between 5 Westmount Road and 7 Westmount Road.
The council-owned site would see new council housing as part of the Greenwich Builds programme which aimed to oversee 1,750 new council homes.
Launched as a project to construct council homes at scale again after decades of minimal building, this could be one of the last as the council now looks to pull back.
Government support – or lack of
One key reason is the new Labour Government do not appear keen on funding directly built new council housing, instead preferring new social homes to be built in partnership with private developers.
That’s not entirely dissimilar to the policy of previous decades which proved such a failure to provide truly affordable housing. The 1997 to 2010 Labour government had an extremely poor record with new council housebuilding, overseeing even fewer than both prior and successive Tory governments – and the Conservatives built far fewer than during decades after 1945.
The Starmer and Reeves government appear to be following prior policy, with public land either sold or pushing for private developers to take the lead.
While few truly affordable homes have been built homeless households in the borough has rocketed to more than 2,000 with vast amounts of public money now being spent on hotels, B&Bs and heading towards private landlords.
A similar picture is seen nationwide.
It’s a key factor behind council cuts to services in Greenwich and other authorities across the country as housing issues consume ever more funds as billions in public money flows to private interests.
