2 September (Part 1) - Erith Quarry. Not for your average Erith family
The first of the new houses at
Erith Quarry go on sale today. Not cheap,
definitely not affordable. Prices range from £400,000 up to £525,000. Clearly of
no use whatsoever to the vast bulk of local families. You can buy a half share
of the cheapest three bed semi for £220,000. Absolutely ridiculous. Buyers are
having to subsidise the school that Bexley Council squeezed out of the
developers as part of the planning consent.
Labour Councillor Danny Hackett is quoted in the Bexley Times this week.
He
says that such prices are out of reach. He’s dead right isn’t he?
The only thing Danny may have got wrong is that he thinks Bexley Tories are not
acknowledging the problem. It’s not just Bexley Tories, it’s all of them. I’m
surprised the housing situation nationally has not yet provoked civil unrest.
Even my own son who earns well above the national average wage has had to be
given a financial helping hand to buy a 1950s council house way out in the Wiltshire sticks.
Bexley Cabinet Member Linda Bailey is deluded if she thinks the Quarry
development “will benefit a great many local people and their families”. It will
attract City workers with an eye on the improved journey times post Crossrail -
and they are the sort of high spending residents that Bexley Council wants. All
Councils actually.
A relative worked on development and growth in Newham until he retired recently.
He said that “yuppifying” the area around Stratford and Forest Gate displaced
huge numbers of people and the Council had no idea where they went to. The implication was they didn’t care.
It will be the same in Bexley. 30,000 new dwellings will change the character of the Borough.
I am quite fearful of what I will see in Abbey Wood over the next couple of years. Traffic
gridlock
is more than likely.
Young local people setting out in life have every right to be aggrieved. Within
three years of starting work with nothing I had saved enought money to buy my first house aged
only 21. True I couldn’t afford to furnish it but it was a start.
In 1984 when I found myself penniless - long story - and moved from Hampshire to
Plumstead I put down the deposit on a flat after wandering into a bank and
raiding my Visa card for three grand.
The appalling housing situation that prevails in 2017 has been brought about by
people like Linda Bailey vaguely “hoping” that things might get better while
dismissing the protestations of Danny Hackett and countless others with similar
social consciences.
The source of this statement has been conveniently removed from Bexley Council’s website
There is no social housing available for rent at Erith Qiarry.
From 2015: Councillor Abena Oppong-Asare
(Labour, Thamesmead East) put the case for affordable homes on behalf of the Labour Group of Bexley council. She was
ignored as is to be expected. There will be no affordable homes in Erith Quarry
because if the house prices are not kept high the developer would not be able to
afford to build the school.