Boff: stop housing tenants in high rises to avoid social breakdown

Published by Max Salsbury for 24dash.com in Housing and also in Communities, Local Government

Andrew Boff will today call on London's councils to stop housing tenants in high rise tower blocks - to avoid social breakdown.

Mr Boff, GLA Conservative Group spokesman for housing, will claim that a new generation of high quality, low rise terraced housing for families is needed for social cohesion.

Mr Boff said: “For too long councils have been housing families in unsuitable high rise blocks of flats. This is despite evidence that they have high rates of crime and promote social breakdown.

"What we need to see urgently is a new generation of high quality, low rise, terraced accommodation for families - with lots of green space.

"Designing and building terraced houses that look normal and repetitive, yet in which people want to live, takes courage. But it is the type of housing people want. A recent poll shows that zero percent of people want to live in a tower block.”

The comments follow Mr Boff's recent report 'Radically Normal' which argues that for a re-design of the homes planned for the Olympic Park.

“London needs larger, high-quality family-sized homes to combat our deepening housing crisis. These homes should be built to the highest environmental standards and push industry boundaries, rather than just conforming to forthcoming legal requirements. As our report shows, this needn’t occur at the expense of the public purse. In fact, significant value can be created by following these principles.”

The views echo those of the right-wing think tank Policy Exchange, which produced a report earlier in the year that recommended demolishing high-rise social housing towers and replacing them with streets of low-rise flats and terraced homes.

The report said that such a move would "improve the lives of "thousands of people who suffer from living in multi-storey housing".

Mr Boff will speak today at the London Assembly’s Housing and Regeneration Committee meeting which will examine the provision and quality of council housing in the capital.