I was surprised to see Siân Berry (Letters, 9 January) advocate that Labour “buy the supply” of landlord homes as a way of increasing the stock of social housing. Siân may want to pay more attention closer to home. The Labour council in Brighton and Hove is pursuing exactly that policy, as was featured in the Guardian last year (Right to buy in reverse: how Brighton is tackling its social housing crisis, 26 October).
As with many policy areas, the Greens like soundbites and writing letters, but often have vanishingly little interest in actual policy implementation. It was invariably the case when the Greens ran Brighton and Hove city council: a lot of talking about the climate crisis, but little progress in expanding recycling nor city-wide decarbonisation – something that we are now putting right.
On housing, their record was even worse: the backlog of council house repairs reached record levels, they allowed houses of multiple occupation licensing to lapse and failed to roll out landlord licensing. This despite all the warm words and “housing is a human right” rhetoric. If Siân wants to see a progressive council buying housing stock into public ownership, she need look no further than her Labour council and the work we are doing in Brighton, which she represents as an MP.
Bella Sankey
Labour leader of Brighton and Hove city council
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