Labour and Conservatives unite to build houses on shaky foundations

The Labour and Conservative parties came together in the Council Chamber tonight (27 October 2015) to force through a plan to build more houses in Rugby than the town needs.

A report from the Council officers said that Rugby needed to build 480 houses a year to meet its own demands. (The Council has approved 6,200 new houses at the Rugby Radio Station site so it is taking care of local needs.)

However the Labour and Conservative councillors wanted to go further and accept an additional 2,800 houses to meet Coventry's needs. They wanted the Council to accept an agreement with Coventry City Council which says that "There is clear evidence that Coventry City Council is unable to meet its full objectively assessed housing needs within the city boundary …". However as the debate progressed it became increasingly clear that this statement was not true.

Cllr Neil Sandison (Lib Dem, Eastlands) said that Coventry could release some of their redundant employment sites for housings.

Cllr Howard Roberts (Ind, Dunchurch) said that the planning consultants who claimed to have calculated Coventry's unmet needs would not say how they had arrived at their figures and therefore it was impossible to check them to see if they were correct.

Eventually two tory councillors, Cllr Peter Butlin and Cllr Michael Stokes, agreed that Coventry could do more - but still voted to accept the additional 2,800 houses. However the needs of Rugby residents were not uppermost in their minds. Another tory councillor, Heather Timms, said the most important thing was to "reassure the [government's] inspector that we can meet the unmet need in Coventry".

Eventually the Labour and Conservative parties ganged up and used their combined strength to vote down the Liberal Democrat and Independent councillors who were calling for further scrutiny of the plans.

For more information see - http://rugby.lib.dm/a910sJ .