Elections

According to a recent survey by Nationwide Building Society house prices in Hammersmith and Fulham rose by 22% in the last year, to take the cost of the average home in Hammersmith and Fulham to over £497,000.

Property prices in Hammersmith & Fulham are now the third highest in London, after Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster.

Merlene commented:

"There are clearly market forces at work pushing up property prices in the borough. The weakness of sterling caused by Labour's quantitative easing has also enticed more foreign money to compete for our limited supply.

This is all the more reason why we need to increase the supply of affordable housing in the borough. The Tories fail to understand that there are social costs to forcing more households into overcrowded accommodation, which has resulted in the further widening of the wealth and heath gap within the borough."

Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh, Tory leader of the council continues to advocate reducing the proportion of social housing available in the borough. It is the professed policy of the Tory controlled Council, endorsed by the Tory Parliamentary candidate, only to increase intermediate housing which would in reality be out of reach of the 9000 households currently on the Council waiting list for affordable housing.

I have been selected to stand as the Parliamentary Candidate for Hammersmith when the next general election is called.

As your Liberal Democrat Candidate I have a vision for Hammersmith. Not a vision where the property prices are the 4th highest in London but where over 40% of housing stock do not meet national 'decent homes' standard. Nor one where increasing number of parents have to send their children to schools outside of the borough because of their lack of faith in the local schools (59% of children leave school with less than 5 good GCSEs including Maths and English).