Edmonton Labour Party

Andy Love highlights Enfield Council's failure to provide affordable homes

Edmonton’s Labour and Cooperative Prospective Parliamentary Candidate Andy Love has highlighted the failure of Enfield Council to provide anywhere near the amount of affordable homes required in the area. 

According to official figures published recently in a Housing League Table by housing and homelessness charity Shelter, 2,916 affordable homes need to be built every year in Enfield to go some way to meeting the desperate need for homes for low income families, however, last year, Enfield Council planned for just 137 affordable homes.

An average of 423 new affordable homes were provided in Enfield in each of the last three years, which meets the Council’s plans, but dramatically fails to match the annual level of affordable homes needed.  There are currently 6,258 households on the waiting list for affordable housing in Enfield.  At current rates, this would take over eight years to clear. 

According to the Shelter Housing League Table, Enfield Council is ranked at number 199 of 323 local authorities nationwide in terms of its affordable housing provision, and number 18 out of 33 councils in London.  This means that the majority of the country and region is doing a better job of meeting affordable housing need than Enfield Council.

Responding to the severe lack of affordable housing, Andy said…

“Shelter’s figures highlight just how badly Enfield Council is failing to meet the local need for affordable homes.  The waiting list for households needing affordable homes is long so no-one expects for this to be cleared overnight, but it’s obvious that a lot of other local authorities are doing much more to tackle the need than Enfield is.

“Planning to build just 137 affordable homes in a year is completely unacceptable given that the waiting list extends to thousands and that independent experts have said that the number of affordable homes that need to be built in Enfield every year is approaching 3,000.  Enfield Council needs to address this issue immediately.”