Berwick councillor urges Northumberland County Council to declare a housing emergency

Georgina Hill, who represents the Berwick East ward, raised the issue at a recent meeting of the local authority – highlighting what she says is the chronic shortage of housing, especially in the social sector, the conditions many residents are living in, rising homelessness and the gross inequalities the housing market perpetuates.

Following on from a presentation by Coun Wendy Pattison, the portfolio holder for adult social care, Coun Hill said: “I would like to put it to you that we need to declare a housing emergency - due to the the shortage, the conditions people are living in and a perfect storm of factors.

“Every week, I hear awful stories about people’s housing situation and given it is so serious, so important, isn’t it time that we declared a housing emergency?”

Coun Pattison said that council leader Glen Sanderson wanted to mention the issue and he did so later in the meeting, saying that the administration had targeted a delivery of 1,000 affordable homes and have delivered 1,800, putting £50million towards this purpose.

He also referred to the affordable housing scheme currently being built at Seton Hall, Tweedmouth, in Coun Hill’s ward.

Coun Hill said in response: “Just to be clear, I don’t blame the county council administration for this particular issue. We have, for example, the fact that Governments of all colours have failed to build nearly enough houses, especially social housing, and also developers land banking and then drip-feeding the market.”

Coun Sanderson then said he would look into the data further.