12:38pm Tuesday 6th July 2010
By Reader's letter
BLAMING Coun Steve Galloway and the Lib Dems, as Coun Tracey Simpson-Laing does (Letters, July 2) for York’s “chronic housing shortage” is Labour spin at deflecting the blame from its own door.
The main reason for there being no progress with York Central is York council’s 50 per cent affordable housing policy. It is this policy, which was York’s Labour Party’s brainchild, that has caused the shortage, and damaged the house-building industry in York. It has been in force since April 2005 and has produced only five affordable completions in five years.
Despite the policy’s undeniable and catastrophic failure, it is Coun Simpson-Laing, not Coun Galloway, who continues to support it.
Blaming the abolition of Yorkshire Forward and regional housing targets by the current Government is just more spin.
Neither of these has had any bearing on the production of homes in York, and it is locally controlled planning policies that allow or – as in York’s case – have stifled and prevented development.
Coun Simpson-Laing and her Labour Party are as much, if not more, culpable than the Lib Dems for the policies that have done the damage, and her attempts to duck the blame won’t wash. Paul S Cordock, Durlston Drive, Strensall, York.
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