Building Strong Communities

There HAS to be a better way of housing people in London. All we are seeing is demolition, overseas investors, councils pushing through high rise towerblocks and of the small areas left of green land on council estates being 'infilled'; All this means locals are getting priced out of the market and the waiting list for council housing goes up and up; families are moved out of the area or crammed into unsuitable temporary space, whilst 1 in 12 properties sit empty; either on the market for YEARS or sit as empty investment properties that cost more than TWENTY FIVE times the average wage. Southwark is selling off land, chopping down trees, demolishing perfectly good buildings rather than retrofitting them (retro is usually cheaper & much better for the environment) and then trying to market it all as if its 'regeneration for all' - MY IDEA ::::: so I would like to see an investigation to weed out into the corrupt, revolving door, pocket lining councillors who are only interested in themselves and then put some investment into hiring TALENTED, environmentally & socially aware & focused town planners to work with the communities to find REAL solutions rather than plastering over increasingly large cracks....THEN the few genuinely community focused councillors can actually start to engage with the people in their wards rather than spending 99% of their time trying to hold others to account and ending up being exhausted from constantly having to battle for basic services. We need to incentivise council staff with targets that benefit the people who LIVE here; retrofitting rather than demolishing, real green space rather than a sq m per person balcony to fill a quota, truly mixed developments and transparent monitoring systems. We need to invest in PEOPLE to stop developers from calling the shots. We urgently need a system where the community are valued by those looking after them and they in turn are looked after, supported and valued by the community.