The Blackpool Gazette and Blackpool Lead invited the candidates standing for the Blackpool North constituency at next month's general election to a hustings in which they fielded questions from voters.
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given 90 seconds to answer questions from an audience at a Cleveleys venue.
Six out of the eight people on the ballot took part in the event with Jeannine Creswell (Social Democratic Party) missing and a stand-in taking the place of the absent Lorraine Beavers.
In order of appearance on stage:
PAUL MAYNARD (Conservative Party)
JAMES RUST (Monster Raving Loony Party)
GITA GORDON (Independent)
BILL GREENE (Liberal Democrats)
TINA ROTHERY (Green Party)
DAN BARKER (Reform UK)
CLIVE GRUNSHAW (Labour [Stand-in])
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given 90 seconds to answer questions from an audience at a Cleveleys venue.
Six out of the eight people on the ballot took part in the event with Jeannine Creswell (Social Democratic Party) missing and a stand-in taking the place of the absent Lorraine Beavers.
In order of appearance on stage:
PAUL MAYNARD (Conservative Party)
JAMES RUST (Monster Raving Loony Party)
GITA GORDON (Independent)
BILL GREENE (Liberal Democrats)
TINA ROTHERY (Green Party)
DAN BARKER (Reform UK)
CLIVE GRUNSHAW (Labour [Stand-in])
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NewsTranscript
00:00is on the subject of housing and how will you improve the amount, condition and affordability
00:07of housing in our area? What are you going to do to end the housing emergency? So we'll
00:15start in the middle with Rita.
00:20Housing is a very big issue here and when I held the caseload for young people in the
00:28youth offending team, that was, housing was one of the concerns that caused antisocial
00:36behaviour because there was, the houses were overcrowded, the kids wanted to just go out,
00:44they didn't have anywhere to go and also our houses are, many of them are damp. 74%
00:52of the rented accommodations people develop, people depend on housing and so not enough
01:00houses have been made. Although other parties will tell you that they've made affordable,
01:07they've built affordable houses but that's a difference. They are not social houses.
01:12Social houses have not been built.
01:25This area is incredibly crowded. There is not enough space to build the houses that
01:32we actually need. So we need to look at the types of houses that we've got. I don't think
01:38that's an easy answer so I'm not going to give you an easy answer off the top of my
01:42head. One of the things that we've got to do, we've got to improve the houses that we've
01:47got so that people can live in them.
01:54The condition of housing in Blackpool is appalling and I've been a renter and my daughter is
01:58a renter and the state of the housing is awful. There was something the other day in the paper
02:02and it was about the fact that homeless people were taking over abandoned bed and breakfasts
02:06and providing their own solution. You know there is a lot of property that's abandoned
02:10in this town that we should be bringing back into use rather than just keep building out
02:15of town houses with no services to keep up with that number of people moving into the
02:21area. So we have to make sure that yes we do need to provide more housing, bring it
02:26back into use, abandoned places, but more than anything make sure that there is the
02:33services to cope with the number of people that would then be in that area and to raise
02:37our standards and I believe we're the only party, the Green Party, to be calling for
02:41a rent cap because the state is some of the houses and yet the rents are through the roof
02:45and for what? Mould?
02:51I don't think you can talk about the problem with the availability of houses and the cost
03:01of housing without looking at the population explosion we've had in the UK in the last
03:0520 years. Six million since the Tories got into power and four million in the Blair years.
03:10Our proposal is to freeze immigration, our one in, one out policy and allow the country
03:15to catch up. To keep up we need to build a new home, a new dwelling every two minutes
03:20to actually house everybody. Locally we would prioritise the use of brownfield sites and
03:25also we would have a policy to build social housing and affordable housing but if we don't
03:29address the demand end there's no point trying to talk about supply.
03:33Yes I mean there definitely is a crisis in housing within Blackfield, within Cleveland
03:43and within Fleetwood. I mentioned HMOs and I should have said that it's houses in multiple
03:49occupation and that in some ways the cheaper accommodation is what is the blight within
03:54the local area and we need to tackle that. We need to tackle the absentee landlords,
04:00the people that run down the properties that means that people who end up in those properties
04:06end up being in the worst accommodation ever and that then affects and impacts on the whole
04:14standard of living of the area itself and so by tackling the crisis that we have here,
04:21stopping the absentee landlords, making sure that we have quality checks on that accommodation,
04:27bringing those up to standards, giving young people jobs to work on them to bring them
04:32up to standard. That's the way to do it.
04:41So three very quick ideas that I think really will matter in this part of the board. First
04:45and foremost Blackfield Council and Wyre Council have to do improper centres of rough sleeping
04:50that never gets done in 14 years so the council doesn't access all the funding it could get
04:56from the government to deal with rough sleeping. That's simply not right in my view. They've
05:00never changed their methods. The second thing and I agree with Tina on this, walking up
05:04and down the streets as we all did during this election campaign, we're seeing far
05:08too many vacant houses. They need to be brought back into use and we're not going to build
05:13on out of town sites. The challenge though is that the VAT levied on new build is zero
05:18and the VAT levied on bringing older properties back into use is 17.5%. That has to change.
05:24We have to have a flat rate in my view and then if bias is over, new build disappears.
05:34Call me loony, but 120,000 people have come over in dinghies and they've all found housing.
05:42So what we do is everybody who hasn't got a house over here, you catch the ferry into
05:47France and you come back in a dinghy and the government feds you off.