In the third most expensive place to live in the UK, council tenants protest against city becoming ‘somewhere only the wealthy can afford to live’





Cambridge residents are taking to the streets on Saturday in a protest to highlight the effect of the housing crisis on the city.

Hundreds of people are marching through Cambridge – the third most expensive place to live in the UK in 2014 – as part of a day of demonstrations organised by Cambridge city council and the local branch of trade union Unite.



The demonstration is in response to the government’s proposed changes to social housing in the housing and planning bill, which the Labour-controlled council says will force it to sell off a quarter of its housing stock – around 2,000 homes – to fund the controversial extension of right-to-buy to housing association tenants, and impose a 1% cut on social housing rents.

The council says hundreds of current council tenants face the prospect of having to move out of their communities to find cheaper accommodation or even, at worst, becoming homeless.

Council tenant Diana Minns, joining the march, said she was appalled by government plans that would decimate council housing in Cambridge and elsewhere. “I am proud to be a council tenant. It has provided a safe, secure, well-maintained home for me and my family. I pay a sensible, not subsidised, rent. The combined effects of the proposals announced so far mean that council housing in Cambridge won’t be there for those who need it in the future,” she said. “I am angry about the government proposals and the profound effects they will have on the future housing prospects for people in Cambridge.”

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James Youd, secretary of the Cambridge branch of the Unite union, said that housing should be a human right, not a war of attrition. “We won’t allow our city to become somewhere only the wealthy can afford to live,” he said.

Liane Groves, head of Unite Community, which supports community campaigns, said families were being priced out by rising private rents and an acute lack of social housing. “There aren’t enough homes to supply people’s needs, so prices have rocketed,” she said. “Leaving the housing market to the private sector has clearly failed, which is why the government and local authorities need to intervene and get building. Unite is calling for more council house building and greater regulation of landlords, including rent controls, which it says work in Germany and Sweden.”

Cambridge council retains the freehold on 1,133 properties, sold under the existing right-to-buy scheme. Fewer than half – 482 houses – are being rented out, even though there are at least 3,000 families and individuals in the city waiting for accommodation.

According to the Valuation Office Agency, private rents in the city have increased by 12% since last year and the average rent in the private sector is now just over £1,200 a month – unaffordable for those on average or low incomes.

House prices in Cambridge have risen more than in any other British town or city over the past seven years. The average price for a house in the city is £430,000. The maximum a couple, both on £25,000 a year, could borrow would be £175,000. Figures from the VOA also show that almost half the people purchasing houses in Cambridge are from overseas.

Kevin Price, the executive councillor for housing at the council, said the government’s “all-out assault on social housing” since 2010 had turned what was a housing crisis in Cambridge into a housing disaster.

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