Tuesday, February 15, 2005
Wandle School sell-off collapses
The Planning Applications Committee was due to hear the controversial plan at its meeting on 10th February 2005 but the developers decided at the last minute to withdraw them.
These plans were an absolute outrage. I've been inundated with objections from local residents concerned about the over-development of this site and the overbearing and detrimental effect such a colossal building would have had on Earlsfield.
The developers need to understand that they cannot do whatever they like in communities such as this.
There's another point here. Wandle School was a public building, benefiting the local community and held in trust for us by the council. Yet again, the Conservatives have flogged off our building - not to provide an alternative community benefit such as affordable homes - but so that they can pocket the proceeds and use them for their own purposes.
We all know there's a massive housing problem in Wandsworth - made far, far, worse by the Tories' catastrophic housing policies which only meet the needs of the wealthiest. The council's own housing survey, carried out in 2003, says that the borough will need over 30,000 affordable public homes to rent by 2011. At present, the entire council housing stock is about 18,000. And yet the Tories refuse to build ANY affordable homes to rent. How will they even begin to make a dent in their own forecast if they won't use sites like Wandle School to start turning the tide of homelessness and overcrowding?
The answer is - obviously - they won't. They don't want to. They're perfectly happy for generations of Tooting families to be forced out of the borough because of the lack of affordable homes, meanwhile encouraging property speculators to cram huge numbers of luxury flats onto our few reamaining sites.
Another example of the choice at the coming election: choose action to provide affordable homes with Labour, or isolated gated over-development for millionaires only with the Tories.
Sadiq
