ROOF Blog

London Mayor Boris Johnson has urged MPs to show children living in overcrowded homes the same concern as they have shown battery chickens.

More than 270 MPs have signed a parliamentary motion calling for better living conditions for chickens.

The mayor and Shelter are calling on the government to rewrite definitions of overcrowding, which they say was promised in 2004. About 330,000 children in London live in overcrowded homes, Shelter says.

Current legislation passed in 1935 means a family of four living in a one-bedroom flat are not classed as being in overcrowded accommodation.

Shelter’s director of policy and campaigns, Kay Boycott, said the number of children living in overcrowded homes has gone up 10 per cent in two years. ‘People cannot afford to move to larger homes when they have children,’ she said.

‘The legal standard for accommodation needs to be rewritten by government. Living in confined conditions has a devastating effect on family life, especially children’s safety, health and education,’ she added.

A report commissioned by the Howard League for Penal Reform has called for a reduction in the number of prisoners and the closing of some jails. The report said that prison and probation funding should be diverted to tackling the causes of crime, and suggested that short-term prison sentences be replaced with community-based responses. The report said that overcrowding threatened to ‘bring the penal system to its knees’ with the prison population doubling in the past two decades to an all time high of around 84,000.

And in London mayor Boris Johnson has unveiled plans to halve overcrowding in the capital by 2016. In the latest draft of his housing strategy he promised to cut overcrowding in the social housing sector and to deliver more family sized affordable homes, and added that it will make London the first city in Britain to make such a commitment.

However, Westminster CC has revealed plans to embark on the biggest council house building programme for a generation in May. During the next four years the council will build almost 500 homes on brownfield and under-used sites on existing estates to help ease overcrowding and homelessness. The scheme will include 104 shared ownership homes and 70 one-bedroom starter homes at a discounted rate. Most of the houses will be set aside for social rent and low cost home ownership, while more than half will have at least three bedrooms. Latest figures show that Westminster has around 1,200 families in overcrowding and 2,500 in temporary accommodation.

The number of people living in overcrowded homes in England will soar 15 per cent to 2.6 million by 2011 as unemployment and repossessions bite, the National Housing Federation warned today. It says an extra 350,000 people would be living in overcrowded conditions in the next two years, exacerbated by the economic slowdown which has left as few as 70,000 new homes being built this year - down from 140,000 in 2008/09. Regionally, the most severe living conditions are in London, where 6.6 per cent of all homes are officially classified as overcrowded.

Westminster city council has promised to rehouse all overcrowded households by 2014. More than 3,000 households are in priority need on the council’s waiting list, including people with medical needs, those living in temporary accommodation and more than 1,000 families in overcrowded households. The first 40 households living in the most severely overcrowded properties will be moved by the end of the year.

More than 500,000 households in England are living in overcrowded conditions, a survey has found. Between 2005-6 and 2007-8, 3 per cent of households were overcrowded, 6 per cent of which were in social housing, compared with 1.4 per cent of owner-occupiers. The highest rates were found in London with 200,000 overcrowded houses, a third in social housing. Shelter said that the figures are up 11,000 on the previous year.