A City Councillor’s Personal View From Councillor Steve Radford

in Liverpool Scene Magazine

Election nights in Liverpool are never predictable; we never expect a national trend to take place here. Even a city-wide swing will have wide variations across the 30 wards. Whilst Liverpool is a major city, in many ways it is still an urban spread of many distinct village type communities.
 
Prior to the Council elections, as the leader of the opposition Liberal Party Group, I had a fair few phone calls from both Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders asking what we would do in the event of a hung council, as the third largest party.
 
We made it clear we would judge any administration on the following three criteria:
 
(1) the need for sound finance - Liverpool City Council is in my view a landlord of mass neglect, with many of the derelict buildings throughout the city being council owned!
 
(2) building on parks and open spaces – which would seem to be going against the very purpose for which they were created in the first place and which is just as much in need of today as yesterday
 
(3) the pathfinder policy, whereby thousands of terraced homes in working class communities are demolished – this has to be looked at afresh. In my view this laying waste whole housing districts must be stopped, for it is a peacetime equivalent to the military pathfinder policy of WWII in Germany
 
Council Housing Experts, that are paid hefty consultation fees confessed under cross examination, that they believe there are an additional 12,000 terraced homes that should be demolished on top of the current 3,000 homes already planned. As this would be politically explosive, the council officers are in complete denial as to what was said at the public enquiries.
 
The real victims of the council and partner Housing Associations boarding up houses and effectively blighting areas are those of us who have worked, saved and bought our modest terraced homes. The Joseph Rowntree Trust has gathered research suggesting that the average person, post demolition and compensation, would be approximately £35,000 worse off.
 
As the election results came in there was a real hope that the ruling Liberal Democrats would be forced to negotiate with The Liberal Party Group. The bulldozers were under threat.
 
Nadia Stewart, formerly of the Croxteth Labour party, who had previously fallen out with Cllr Rosie Bailey, walked to the Liberal Democrats giving then the magic 46 seats. The bulldozers were thus safe and thousands of terraced communities should now be wary that they are not next on the planned run-down to demolition.
 
One sign of hope is that the Labour Leader Cllr Joe Anderson recognises that this policy, funded by government, needs to be reviewed.
 
As Liverpool continues to demolish thousands of affordable homes, the waiting list for housing has soared to record heights. Cllr Joe Anderson also recognised that if the Labour Group had been closer to winning, this policy would have to be reviewed in a bid to garner Liberal Party co-operation.

In fairness he is experienced to consider the real harm the policy has done to local communities.
 
The next local elections are two years away. However just one further defection or a by-election could bring the whole balance into question and the bulldozers of four national building companies who have achieved an effective monopoly over sections of the city might find themselves put to grass.
 
Cllr Steve Radford
Steve is Leader of The Liberal Party Group and has served many years on the Housing Committee