Greens have the best housing policy, says Ken Loach

The Green Party in Brighton & Hove welcomes the news that Ken Loach, filmmaker and political activist, has declared in a video interview for the Guardian¹ that the Greens have the best policy on housing and that Green MP Caroline Lucas was the best speaker at Tuesday’s Homes for Britain rally in London.

The Green Party has pledged to support the building of 500,000 new social homes by the end of the next parliament² and would end the council house ‘right-to-buy’ policy.

Green deputy chair of housing and council candidate Alex Phillips said: “Right-to-buy – introduced under Margaret Thatcher and cemented under Tony Blair – has devastated social housing in this country, depriving councils of the ability to offer sufficient affordable homes and slowly transferring tax payers’ housing investment into the private sector.

“In Brighton & Hove, we need to retain control of the houses we build. Over the last four years, despite the recession and in sharp contrast to other councils, we have created a programme that will give the city 250 new council homes on brownfield sites and we pledge to build many more in the next four years. By contrast, the previous administration’s programme amounted to 30.

“But under right-to-buy, and despite Britain’s housing crisis, we cannot retain all these houses for those who need them most, nor can we use anywhere near all the funds raised by their sales in order to replace them.”

She added: “As Ken Loach has seen, the Greens’ housing policy in Westminster would truly enable a Green council here in Brighton & Hove to deliver exactly the social housing that our city so desperately needs and a proper share of the 500,000 social homes our country needs.

“Meanwhile, the Greens in Brighton & Hove are committed to increasing council housing as much as national government and our scarcity of building land allow, and to pursue the goal of genuine affordability.”

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