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General election 2019’s housing battlegrounds: Warwick and Leamington
While the big topic in this election is Brexit, the housing crisis remains a top issue for voters in many areas. Inside Housing has travelled around the country to visit the marginal seats where it may influence the result. In the second in our series of five, Gavriel Hollander visits Warwick and Leamington
Leamington Spa is not a place traditionally associated with the housing crisis – it was once a retreat for royalty and in 2017, it was voted the happiest place to live. And while Leamington is still relatively affluent, all is not as it once was in a town that – thanks in part to Sir John Betjeman’s famous poem – is almost synonymous with Middle England.
The availability and affordability of housing are growing problems in this corner of Warwickshire. And while they are only some of the myriad issues that come up on the doorsteps of Leamington – Brexit and HS2 are more common topics of conversation according to one canvasser – they could yet prove decisive in a seat that was one of the tightest marginals in the country at the previous election.
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Warwick and Leamington delivered one of the shocks of the night in June 2017, when Labour’s Matt Western overturned Conservative MP Chris White, who won with a majority of 6,606 in 2015. Western was returned with a majority of 1,206 and the consensus was that the University of Warwick’s many students helped swing the result.
Estimated to be around 5,000 (or 10% of the town) during term time, that same population is the cause of some major housing issues, particularly in the south of Leamington, where property tends to be cheaper.
Ian Davison, a Green Party councillor who represents a ward with a large population of students, says: “There’s a lot of students and there’s a feeling [among locals] that they’ve been priced out. When a house comes up for sale, a property developer will buy it and put in six or eight students.”
There are plenty of purpose-built student housing blocks, thrown up by private developers along the canal that form the de facto border between north and south Leamington. There are also major developments taking place further out of town, notably on Europa Way, where Warwick District Council is working with Waterloo Housing Group on a 375-home scheme.
The council, which no party currently controls, says the project will include social housing.
However, Labour councillor Geraldine Cullinan questions its track record.
“They are supposed to build 40% affordable, but it’s not always been adhered to,” she says. “Affordability is a big thing. The lack of social rented housing is a serious problem.”
Since 2011/12, just 163 social rented homes have been delivered across the district, only eight by the council itself. The area does have a bulwark of several hundred council homes, but a walk around Leamington town centre suggests it is not helping those most in need.
Warwick and Leamington: constituency profile
Seat: Warwick and Leamington
Average house price: £290,000
MP: Matt Western (Labour)
Majority: 1,206
Figures: Office for National Statistics
“They won’t build any houses for us,” says Adrian Foster, whom Inside Housing meets selling The Big Issue outside Tesco on the Parade – the town’s central shopping hub. “We want council houses built.”
Mr Foster has been homeless for 27 years and has been a Big Issue vendor for 25. He is one of a growing number of homeless people and rough sleepers trying to scrape a living in Leamington.
He says the police have cracked down on begging and believes the council’s housing team is callous, describing how he lost his flat “because I took a friend in who was on the street”.
The 69-year-old is registered to vote but won’t say how he’ll be voting in the upcoming election: “You can probably work it out,” he laughs.
Leamington has two night shelters run by volunteers and a council-owned hostel at William Wallsgrove House, which has space for 22 people.
There is a growing number of homeless people and rough sleepers trying to scrape a living in Leamington
But Gaynor Louis says she would rather sleep on the streets, as she feels unsafe there. Ms Louis, 49, who had been sofa-surfing since 1998 until becoming homeless earlier this year, says she cannot get on the housing list.
“All I want is to get a room somewhere, but nobody wants us,” she tells Inside Housing in the relative warmth of the public library, where she seems to know at least another half a dozen people, also homeless and sheltering from the rain.
The Conservative candidate, Jack Rankin, is the narrow favourite with the bookies. In his list of six priorities for Warwick and Leamington, housing is only mentioned in the context of “improving roads and transport” to ease the congestion locals fear will result from the new out-of-town developments.
But Ms Cullinan says voters do mention it. “They talk about people on the streets and that can’t be right,” she says. “We live in a well-off area and they see that divide between rich and poor.”
Leamington’s image might be that of an affluent, sleepy town. But the fault lines this election is showing across the country are evident even here.
The housing election: five seats where housing is influencing the race for Number 10
Warwick and Leamington
Gavriel Hollander visits a Labour-held seat where homelessness is an increasingly visible issue
Gower
Lucie Heath heads to South Wales to hear about the local crisis of unaffordable housing
Kensington
Peter Apps travels to a marginal seat in west London defined by the Grenfell Tower fire and housing inequality
South Shields
Jack Simpson heads to the North East to hear about a lack of investment in new housing and concern about Universal Credit
Wantage
Nathaniel Barker discovers dissatisfaction with new housebuilding in this Oxfordshire market town
