Mayor Joe told: Fire Redrow and follow your leader

Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson is to be asked to fire Redrow Homes as the city council’s housing partner, and instead follow the call from his party's own leader, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, to build homes “for the many, not the few”.

The call will come at a meeting of Liverpool City Council on Wednesday night.

Redrow has earmarked sites in Sefton Park and on the Harthill/Calderstones park estate for luxury and executive homes.

The Lib Dem group on the council will be asking the city’s Labour administration to back Jeremy Corbyn’s housing policy and ditch the housing partnership with Redrow Homes.

The Lib Dem councillor for Allerton and Hunts Cross, Mirna Juarez, said: “The current partnership with Redrow Homes is failing to deliver the housing that Liverpool needs. Instead of a handful of high priced homes in South Liverpool area where Redrow likes to build, there needs to be more three bed semis and two bed flats.”

The Labour Party nationally says in its policy that the number of affordable homes to buy has plummeted by two thirds under the Conservatives.  The party says it will build thousands of low cost homes, with local people being given first dibs on new homes built in their areas.

Few first time buyers are likely to be able to afford the homes planned for Calderstones, where some of the detached homes are likely to cost £650,000.

Cllr Juarez added: “In the council’s own figures in Woolton, Church, Allerton, Cressington and Mossley Hill wards there are 4,459 people living alone, many of them in substantial houses. They need two bedroomed flats to move to in the areas where they live. This would release big homes to young families. At the same time the starting price of £300,000 up to £650,000 on the Redrow Homes is way beyond the reach of young families who are continuing to leave our city.”

Cllr Andrew Makinson, deputy leader of the Lib Dems, said the Redrow partnership is not a good financial deal either for the city. 

“The latest figures are that the cash received from Redrow to date has only assisted with the provision of 96 social homes. This is no more than would have been received in land sales and planning agreements than from any other developer, and we would probably have got more for the land if separately tendered. Because so few houses are built on the land our council tax take is a lot less than if we had agreed a larger number of smaller homes”.

The Lib Dems have also called on the council to take action to prevent people from being fleeced by greedy profiteering in the sale of freeholds. The want the council to impose conditions to protect people buying homes with leaseholds from inflated prices.