Learning From the Past

Last Saturday I attended the Old Whittington Gala, a vibrant and well attended annual event which is a credit to its local organisers. Napoleonic soldiers paraded outside the Revolution House, a superb brass brand played, children climbed in and out of the police van and the wide variety of stalls did a roaring trade. A newcomer this year was the RAAW stall (Residents Against Asbestos Waste), a local group who are doing an outstanding job of campaigning against the application to put an asbestos waste transfer site smack in the middle of a densely populated urban area.

Upstairs in the Revolution House was a fascinating exhibition of aerial photographs from the early 1950's. They showed new Council Estates being built in areas around Chesterfield such as Burnbridge Road at Old Whittington and Wikeley Way at Brimington. With a rapidly growing post war population, demobbed troops and bomb damaged housing to replace the Government of the day embarked on a major national programme of social housing to meet the urgent need.

How different the response of today's Government is to the new housing crisis that we face. Waiting lists for Council Housing have doubled nationally (from 1 million in 1997 to a predicted 2 million in 2010), and trebled locally in areas like Chesterfield and Sheffield. With the rapidly growing rate of repossessions in the private housing sector and the slashing of building programmes by private house builders, the demand for Council Housing is likely to rocket further this year.

The Government's answer? To rise to the challenge as their predecessors did 60 years ago? No -this is truly a Government that has let everyone down and is incapable of action. They all but ended Council House building when they came to power in 1997 with only 300 being built in the whole country last year -the lowest figure since 1914. Worse still they steal millions of pounds a year from local Council tenants rents instead of letting it be spent on local housing need. They believed that the private sector would meet the need -now waiting lists are soaring and the numbers 'sofa surfing' at friends and relatives or living in totally unsuitable accommodation grows and grows.

Perhaps New Labour Ministers should visit the exhibition at the Revolution House as a reminder of what Labour once stood for!

Paul Holmes MP for Chesterfield.