‘Lower stamp duty won’t help’: State of social housing in Lambeth at the heart of election debate

Labor and Tory parliamentary candidates clashed over the state of social housing in south London at a meeting in Waterloo on Monday night (17 June). Florence Eshalomi, Labour’s candidate for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, admitted Labour-led Lambeth Council’s housing department had “challenges” but said cuts in government funding meant it was impossible for the local authority to solve the problem.

Aarti Joshi, the Tory candidate for the area, accused Labour-led Lambeth and Southwark councils of leaving people in “unacceptable conditions” and not doing enough to house families in the empty properties they own.

Meanwhile, Chris French, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green, said more efforts should be made to work with major investors such as Legal and General to create affordable homes on development sites in the area .

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Catherine Dawkins, the area’s Green candidate, criticized local Labor councils for approving the demolition of existing social housing by redeveloping the property and said the Green Party had pledged to deliver 150,000 council homes a year and end Right to Buy.

Eshalomi, who has been MP for the area since 2019, also highlighted Labour’s housing commitments, such as the extension of Awaab’s Law – which requires social landlords to investigate and fix reported health hazards within specified time frames – to the private rental sector.

She added: “I want to see a government that comes to work with Labor councils like Lambeth so they can borrow at a reasonable rate and build the kind of council housing I grew up in, working with a Labor mayor to to make sure we look at that question of affordability because affordability should be based on your income.

“It’s all well and good that the Tories are saying they will cut stamp duty for first-time buyers, (but) to buy in this constituency you need a deposit of around £100,000. Lower stamp duty will not help them. “

Joshi said she believed property prices would not fall until the rate of house building increased and said the government wanted to increase house building on brownfield land.

She added: “The Conservative government has committed to building 1.6 million properties in the next parliament if elected. (…) I firmly believe that if you don’t have a home to call your own, it’s quite difficult to feel human.”

French added: “Most of the new builds I’ve seen around are student accommodation, mainly international students coming together. I understood that there was a necessary model for universities in how they constructed their fees. (But) I look at them and I think they could actually be housing for the people who live in the area. It is a fairly transient population and is only built to generate income, not any social value.”

Due to boundary changes, whoever wins in July will be the first MP for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green. The seat includes most of the now-defunct Vauxhall constituency.

Eshalomi won the former seat with 56.1 percent of the vote share in the last election in 2019. The Liberal Democrats came second with 21.3 percent and the Conservatives third with 16.7 percent . The Greens finished fourth.

The candidates were also quizzed on education, health, culture and accessibility by audience members at the Oasis Church auditorium in Waterloo. Representatives of the reform and the Social Democratic Party were invited to the event, but they did not respond to the invitations.

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