I am saddened that Coun Joe Watt (“We would hate to move house”, Letters, March 23) cannot take the trouble to find out the details behind the York private sector housing strategy 2008/13.

The Government requires the council to produce a strategy for the private sector every five years. The latest one was published in September 2008, and can I make it abundantly clear that nowhere in the document does it say that the council should force people to move out of their homes. If it had done so, I would not have expected the strategy to be endorsed, as it was, by the all-party housing and social services meeting in December 2008.

However, we are aware that there are some people who would welcome a move to a property which is more suitable for their requirements – schemes in both Leeds and Harrogate have proved successful and one in York has been oversubscribed. Establishing the reasons why people may or may not choose to move is one of the issues which will be looked at in the future.

Coun Susan Galloway
Executive member for housing and adult social services, City of York Council, The Guildhall, York.



• I must object to some of Conservative Coun Watt’s recent comments. At the last full council meeting he accused Labour of doing nothing for older people. He recently commented along these lines in The Press’s letter pages, and has recently championed the cause of older people with regards to what he coins the “Lib-Lab alliance” on York’s housing policy.

I would like to point out a few things to Coun Watt. The first is that Labour has given free TV licences to the over-75s, free bus passes to the over-60s, increased in real terms the value of the state pension and both introduced and increased winter fuel payments for older people.

Under Thatcher many older people had to survive on just £69 a week and she reduced the value of state pension while many literally froze to death on a regular basis.

Also, just because Labour believe in supporting social housing and the Lib Dems happen to loosely agree, this does not constitute a Lib-Lab pact.

I think he should be very wary of such language coming from a Conservative party that last year voted for a Lib-Dem Council budget that cut travel tokens for the elderly in half and this year pushed through a budget that could lead to job losses.

There is only one alliance in York and it is the Con-Dem alliance. Labour is the only real opposition to this mess and we care about older people, not just in words but also in actions.

Coun James Alexander
Labour prospective Parliamentary candidate for York Outer, The Old Doctor’s Surgery, Holgate Road, York.



• I was very angry as a pensioner on reading “Home discomforts” (The Press, March 18). People have worked extremely hard to make their family homes comfortable and it is their right to stay there if they so wish.

If the planning department communicated with the housing department and stopped the development of family homes into student lets, as is happening in various areas of the city, especially in eastern York, surely the situation could have been avoided.

But that would necessitate the university providing even more accommodation for its students, at reasonable rents, to mop up the planned increase in student numbers as well as those already in private houses – this would in turn prevent property developers from feeding their financial appetites, which would be a shame.

Anne Pettit
Badger Hill, York.



• read with utter dismay that City of York Council appears to have come up with no workable solutions to the affordable housing shortage in their housing strategy for 2008-13 (Does size matter?, The Press, March 20). The obvious answer is one it has thus far chosen to avoid.

How on earth does assisting people to downsize from larger to smaller dwellings create more affordable homes? The answer is, it doesn’t – downsizing will make matters worse, not better. It’s a ridiculous proposal and one made out of desperation to avoid the obvious solution.

Paul Stamp, York’s housing strategy manager, asks the question: “What might prevent people from downsizing?” Well Paul, maybe the shortage of smaller affordable houses, for one. Mr Stamp’s boss, Bill Woolley, makes an equally unhelpful remark, saying: “It is not about numbers, it’s about quality.” Sorry, Bill, it is all about numbers. There is little or no affordable housing coming through the planning system, and they both know the reason why. It’s because of the council’s 50 per cent affordable housing policy being unrealistically greedy and unworkable.

The council was told this was the case before the credit crunch, and further told throughout the course of 2008 when they held consultations and workshops to explore possible solutions to the problem. It is a shame that estate agent Kevin Hollinrake hadn’t attended the council’s workshop on November 10, 2008, or he would have been aware that myself and several developers who did attend, proposed and voted for reducing the policy to at least the 25 per cent level that existed prior to April 2005.

We even said that the policy may have to be scrapped altogether. This mirrors what Mr Hollinrake has asked for, and he is right. It’s the obvious solution, and the only one other than a return to council house building.

Paul S Cordock
Durlston Drive, Strensall, York.