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(Left) James Kempton: free-thinking, Steve Hitchins: missing middle class |
Over garden party drinks the talk is of weighty matters, of parking polls, flight of middle classes and our housing crisis
MY invitation card described the event on Monday evening as a mayoral garden party, and I didn’t think for one moment that it was there that I’d get involved in a serious discussion on housing or parking in Islington.
I was utterly wrong.Islington Council leader James Kempton, a free-thinking rather old-fashioned Liberal, perhaps more so than the previous leader, Steve Hitchins, was soon talking about housing.
But first he asked me what I thought about the referendum on parking whose results were announced last week.
Well, what can you say? Not many councils have the courage or creative thinking to actually ask the people what they want. They are more used to telling them what to do.
But Islington, to its credit, did exactly that.
Whose idea was it? I asked.
Looking slightly uneasy, Mr Kempton suggested he had played a large part in dreaming it up.
He seemed a modest man, and that would be as near as I would ever get, I thought, to drawing a response to my question from him.
Parking is one thing, however contentious, but housing – and the state of the middle class in Islington – is quite another.
I had earlier spoken to Mr Hitchins, and Mr Kempton agreed with him – Islington simply didn’t have the sort of solid belt of middle-class residents you find in Camden.
“There are a lot of professional people you find in the Upper Street area who earn fairly good salaries in the City, rent their properties, but that’s about it,” said Mr Kempton.
He agreed with Mr Hitchins that research had shown that middle-class couples settled in Islington, but when they had seen their children through schools – usually outside the borough and often, presumably, private – they would sell up, and leave.
He also agreed with Mr Hitchins, who argued that it was all right for Ken Livingstone to lay down that 50 per cent of new developments should be allocated to social housing, but the fact remained that the sort of people who would move into these flats wouldn’t necessarily be well off enough to sustain the growth of local shops.
While, officially, Islington Lib Dems have not publicised their intention to build council homes in the borough – this, by the way, would make them a rare breed among local authorities in Britain – Mr Kempton discussed the problems it might throw up.
Where would these new homes be built? Where were the brownfield sites? There were some in the North Road area, off Caledonian Road, he said, but not many elsewhere in the borough.
Then came the whole sensitive issue of immigration and the changing population – first thrown into public debate by MP Margaret Hodge – leading to the question of who would qualify for this new housing.
But Mr Kempton made it clear that whoever would gain they would have to be on the housing list. They would have enough points to put them at the top of the list.
Then, again, despite Mr Livingstone’s predilection for high-rise blocks, both Mr Kempton and Mr Hitchins were clearly very much against the idea.
But who can find fault with Islington for becoming the first council in London to start building council homes again? Who can blame them for trying to cope with the worst housing crisis this country has faced in decades?
However small their efforts, whatever motives political opponents might ascribe to them, one can only feel it’s a step in the right direction.
The few that can be built will be funded from the sale of street properties. But, if Gordon Brown keeps to pledges hinted at in recent discussions, more money may be made available to local authorities, in which case Islington can stride even further into the future.
It’s all very exciting, and all very odd, in a way, that I should have this stimulating discussion at what appeared to be a quiet summer party held by the mayor, Councillor Barbara Smith, at the Children’s Centre in Archway.
I wish there had been Labour councillors at the party with whom I could have developed the arguments, but there was none. A great pity. |
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