The Fanshawe Road re-development has forced residents to leave their homes and raises questions about the affordability of the new homes being built
Later this year Cambridge City Council will be seeking planning permission to replace 32 homes in Fanshawe Road with 93 units. 44 of these are said to be for ‘affordable rent’ although we know from bitter experience that developers often manage to scale down the number of affordable homes during the building process.
Amazingly, the majority of the residents have already been persuaded to vacate their homes. Many who had settled in Coleridge, some with children at local schools, have moved to the outskirts of Cambridge – not being able to afford the offered City Council’s alternative accommodation. Sarah Nicmanis, Green Party City Council Candidate for Coleridge, was shocked to learn that the council normally encourages residents to move as soon as the Council’s Housing Scrutiny Committee gives outline approval for a development and even before planning approval is sought. This is because our planning system favours developers, so that the Council can take this step knowing that planning permission is likely to be granted.
There is no guarantee that the rents for the 44 flats will be truly affordable. Replies from Coleridge residents to the Green Party newsletter informing them about these changes showed that there was confusion about the difference between social and affordable housing. It is confusing! This rent is worked out by a Rent Officer according to a tenant’s circumstances and is assessed every two years. The deceptively named affordable rent was introduced by the coalition government a decade ago to enable social housing providers to charge up to 80% of market rent levels for letting homes. In the exorbitantly priced housing market in Cambridge this is simply unaffordable to most people. Lewis Herbert, Coleridge ward councilor, ex-leader of the City Council and inaugural chair of the Fast Growth Cities group, stated last summer that there was a “real need” to increase the amount of council housing in the city promising that there would be 44 “affordable homes for council rent”, in Coleridge. Unless there is a firm commitment to make these social or fair rents it will do nothing to alleviate the excess of 8000 households who are on the housing waiting list. And we know too that a commitment to build social rent houses or flats itself means little for reducing the housing shortage for families on low incomes unless these are funded in such a way as to prevent them disappearing into the housing market after a very few years.
So, on Fanshawe Road the promise to provide “affordable housing” caused 22 households to be forced out of Cambridge and lose their fairly-rented homes. Sarah Nicmanis will campaign against this unfair development in the run up to the planning decision in November this year.
Contact sarahnicmanis@gmail.com if you would like to get involved.
