Interview: Philippa Roe, Westminster's cabinet member for housing

Philippa Roe, Westminster Council
Philippa Roe. Photograph: Westminster Council

I'd never previously entered Westminster Council's City Hall in Victoria Street a short walk from Parliament Square, but I'd often walked past it. Each time, I'd thought two wicked words: "filthy" and "rich." Once within, that impression went undispelled. It's a sumptuous premises, boasting perhaps the smoothest lifts in Christendom. I glided serenely to the 17th floor, encased in a metaphor for upward mobility. Having reached a giddy height I was ushered to a glass-walled room that offered fabulous views of the capital's geographical heart and contained almost nothing other than a bare-topped, oval table. The Tory council's Cabinet Member for Housing settled behind it with a businesslike smile. The table squeaked. In such an elevated place I found it quite difficult not to do the same.

I began by putting it to Councillor Roe that her policy approach was roughly one third preoccupied with wooing earners of middle incomes, one third bracing itself for an avalanche of homelessness resulting from the government's housing benefit reforms, and one third insisting that when it came to meeting local housing demand it was, alas, impossible to please everyone.

She politely took issue, concentrating first on her Housing Renewal Strategy. This was, she insisted, essentially about helping the poor. "We found that there's a twelve year life-expectancy difference between people in some of our poorest wards and people, almost next door, in some of our more wealthy ones," she said. "It was trying to tackle that and some of the issues associated with it in those very deprived wards. It's as much about economic regeneration, tackling worklessness and health and educational inequality as it is bricks and mortar."

Already, we had entered that large and bewildering department of borough politics where everyone seems to be after much the same thing regardless of their party membership, yet allegations of devious social-engineering are made on every side. Roe acknowledged no such motivation to the Guardian. "The objective for me is to tackle some of the inequalities in those very deprived areas. I think you do that partially by creating mixed communities and partially thorough the economic regeneration side of it."

For Roe, the latter entails, among other things, "trying to work in ways of incentivising businesses that locate there to employ local people - we haven't quite worked out how yet, but maybe some cheaper rents or whatever. It's about attracting people into the area, bringing spending power to those communities." Such newcomers, she explained, "perhaps by their nature and because they've got jobs," would tend to be "more aspirational. They can provide role models to the next generation coming up. Their kids would go to the same schools." This would, in turn, make classrooms "more aspirational" too. She essentially described a virtuous cycle of Council-enabled social improvement. Perhaps to underline its moral worth, she stressed that this triumph will not be achieved overnight. "This is not going to be a quick win. Our plans are fifteen years long and maybe longer than that."

There are five "renewal neighbourhoods" in the strategy: Church Street, Tollgate Gardens, the Brunel and Ebury Bridge estates the Westbourne Green area, the last added to the first four recently. The Council's plans are currently out for consultation. I asked Roe to define the difference between the goals she'd just espoused and what Labour Mayor Sir Robin Wales is after in the Olympic borough of Newham.

"We all have different ways of cutting the cake," she said.

But were her goals so very different?

"We went worldwide - not, I hasten to say, at tax payers' expense," she replied, "and we looked at what countries elsewhere were doing, regardless of their political shade. In fact, some of the more left-wing leaning countries are doing some fantastic work in this area. I don't think this is political. I think probably we are doing similar things. There are different shades of grey on the edges of it, but it's all about improving the life chances of people living on our estates."

I had an image of Sir Robin appearing in one of the unoccupied chairs differing loquaciously and as sharply as he once did in a written response to an overture from Westminster's Tory neighbour Hammersmith and Fulham. Of course, the big difference between Westminster and Newham is the cake's range of ingredients. Westminster's contains serious money. By comparison, Newham's has almost none. Yet their respective objectives can look much the same at first glance: using regeneration to replace concentrations of disadvantage, dependency and de-motivation with broader blends of housing and occupants along with environmental improvements and new local jobs provided in partnership with businesses. Note Sir Robin's approval of the Olympic Park masterplan and his employment link-up with John Lewis.

But Paul Dimoldenberg, who leads Westminster's Labour group, says such comparisons are false. In an allusion to the Shirley Porter years he says that Roe and her colleagues' true wish is to replace poorer residents with more affluent ones rather than to assist those already there. He claims that there's "no evidence" that their regeneration policies will deliver the good outcomes she promises, and cites the Church Street area as existing proof. "Many Council properties there have been sold and, yes, it has brought more aspirational-type people to the area," he says. "But they are mostly young people who are working in the West End. They're not really connected locally. Most of them don't have children, so they don't have kids at the local schools. And when they do have families, they tend to move elsewhere. Councillor Roe is talking about a fantasy world."

Labour opponents also claim that Westminster's response to the government's planned housing benefit reforms betray the same desire to engineer the removal of poorer people from the borough. Roe's recent correspondence with ministers shows - see here, here, here and here - shows her seeking changes to the obligations local authorities have to local residents who declare themselves homeless. The changes she suggested would loosen the requirement to house such people within Westminster and remove her duty to some of them altogether. Aren't her critics right to say she wants to purge the poor?

"That is completely untrue," she protested. "We have 25,000 social housing units across Westminster, including the RSLs [Registered Social Landlords] and they will be completely unaffected by this change. If we were shipping out the poor, that would be the target group." She insisted that with the Council's help, most of those private sector tenants who will be hit by the benefit cuts will either get by where they are or be able to find alternative, cheaper accommodation nearby. Westminster contains just over 5,000 claimant households. Other boroughs, - including much poorer ones such as Brent, Newham and Haringey - contain many more, although as Roe pointed out the high Westminster rents mean that a very high percentage of her 5,000 will be hit very hard by the cap due to be imposed next April. Some will lose to the tune of hundreds of pounds a week.

However: "Having said that, we have properties of all sizes in Westminster, including the large ones, that are priced below the level of the caps - not very many on the large side, but nonetheless we have them. And of course if you tell someone that they can have whatever ever it is, say £2,000 a week, for a flat then they go and find one at £2,000 a week! I would! So people who have found their flats, which is what we are talking about, haven't necessarily got the best value for money."

Are there really going to be enough cheaper places available to go round?

"I don't know whether we will have the volume to cope with everybody or not, but I do think that rents will come down," Roe said. "Not necessarily everywhere, but in certain areas where don't think there's the private sector demand to keep them up. In Pimlico, for example, there probably is the demand. But in other areas I'm not sure that there is."

She was sceptical about the London Councils survey of landlords, which suggested that most wouldn't lower rents and said that Westminster stood ready to help hard-hit private sector residents. "We're beefing up our housing options team to help tenants with negotiations with landlords because some people aren't competent enough to do it themselves, and also to advise. If they can't negotiate with their landlords we will then help them find, primarily within Westminster, an alternative property at a cheaper rent.

"There will nevertheless be people for whom their rent doesn't come down or the discrepancy [between the rent they still have to pay and the lowered benefit they receive] is too huge. The key for us then is the discretionary housing pot. People like pensioners who've been here all their lives, children at key stages in their education who might be taking their GCSEs, people with severe medical issues and need to be close to their doctors - those sorts of people - we will use that money to try and keep them here.

"We won't be able to find it for everybody, and there will be some pain associated with this, I'm not denying that at all. But those we are helping, if we try but fail to find them somewhere in Westminster or elsewhere in Central London, then we will find places within easy commuting distance. We won't be looking at booking B&Bs in Hastings. We will be looking for good quality private sector housing that meets their need with good commuting links back into Westminster."

At present, Westminster houses about 1,800 waiting list households in temporary accommodation, said Roe. She's budgeted for an increase of between two and three hundred. Her general view is that a future of massed, effective forced migration of the poor from the centre to a hostile, over-run suburban belt has been overstated. "I don't think it's a crisis, or as dramatic as people have been reporting," she said, "but it is about correcting a policy that is deeply flawed. There are seven and a half million people living in London. Even the worst estimates are that we're talking about tens of thousands of people. These people could easily be dispersed across London without it impacting too heavily on a particular borough. The vast majority in this category have been motivated enough and have the capabilities to have found their own property and signed their own lease agreement. They will be able to find alternative accommodation. They'll find it themselves."

She does, however, believe that Westminster is asked to bear an unfair share of London's vast housing need burden. "At the moment you can come from anywhere in the UK, anywhere in the world actually, walk into Westminster and as long as you can show you've got no connection with anywhere else or you've got six months connection here we have a duty to house you. Well, of course, a) we have Victoria coach station in Westminster and people tend to talk to the Council they arrive in, and (b) we are highly desirable in Westminster. Lots of people would love to come and live in Westminster. We're an absolute magnet. So we get a disproportionate number of people wanting to come and live here, which puts a massive burden on us. We have 11,000 households on our waiting list, 5,000 of which are in priority need. With the best will in the world we are never going to be able to house all of those and if we just had a more equitable way of prioritising people who genuinely are Westminster residents rather than newcomers then I think we'd have a fairer system."

But people have to go somewhere, and if Westminster were granted this "more equitable" definition of who is local, so would every other borough. Where would those with no "local connection" go? Whose responsibility would they be? Does Richmond want Westminster's unconnected homeless any more than Westminster does?

"They probably don't," said Roe, "but do we want people who've come from all over the country and pick on Westminster simply because of its location? It's a national issue, certainly a pan-London issue, I don't see why Westminster should take the brunt of it particularly as this is some of the most expensive real estate in the world. If you had a proper pan-London system for people who don't really have a connection anywhere and just share the burden across London it would be more economic because it's very expensive to build housing here but also fairer to local people. One of the things that local people constantly complain about is that they need rehousing, or their children need housing, and they're constantly pushed down the list by newcomers into the community even though they've lived here for years. This is not a new issue and its not down to the benefit cap. It's something we've been lobbying for for years."

Roe has quite particular views on the government's plans to end secure tenancy agreements for new social tenants and for social landlords to set rents at up to 80 percent of the local market rate. On the latter she sees the danger of such rents being set so high in expensive areas like hers that people on low incomes couldn't afford them. "I would hope given their charitable aims that in Central London they would take that into account when setting their rents. It is a concern, because it would price out the very people they're supposed to be helping." On tenancy terms she distinguishes between security and income flow. "Philosophically, I'm not pro-secure tenancy because I think it stops labour mobility and social mobility and makes dealing with antisocial behaviour and problems like that much more difficult. But I think secure tenancy is not the issue. I think the issue is rent. I would like to be able to ensure that people pay a fair percentage of their income." This, she explained, would mean that tenants who'd gone up in the world could stay put along with their valuable social capital while also providing a bit more cash "which I can use to build the next house and help the next vulnerable family."

Moving such people out would not, she said, be consistent with the "mixed communities" ideal. Which brought us back to intermediate housing. She agreed that Westminster sets great store by providing it. "I think intermediate housing is vital - absolutely vital. Because at the moment you've got, you know, people in social housing and the rich. They don't go to the same schools, they don't use the same parks, they don't go to the same restaurants. They pass each other like ships in the streets. There's no integration. Whereas if you tier your community, then you get proper integration and that's much healthier from every aspect. You need that totally meshed community, which we're failing on at the moment."

She denied that what's available is far too expensive, saying that there are rent-to-buy schemes in Westiminster for people seeking "a nice, decent, good quality one-bedroom flat" who are earning as little as £20,000 a year. There are about 50 of these so far, she said, including in Bayswater and Westbourne. After a while, if participants were "good tenants" and saved £500 a year, they could move on to another scheme: "It's about helping people up the ladder. You don't have to earning 70k a year to be able to afford to live in Westminster. You can be earning less than that."

She revealed, though, that there are problems with developing the intermediate range: "At the moment, wrongly, these products are considered sub-prime. There's an argument we need to have with the banks. Westminster alone isn't a big enough supply chain for them. The Co-op have just said that we can do something on their terms, which we're looking at. "

Well, you can always depend on the socialists.

"Less than one percent of the properties in Westminster are intermediate," continued Roe, "so we do have a problem of a real polarisation of the community between the social rent and the people who are rich enough to be able to afford to own or rent."

Shouldn't we just be building more Council houses?


Same places as you want to build your intermediate houses?

"Well, you do have this real issue of a polarised community," Roe reprised. No chance in her eyes of rolling back the years to days when all sorts of people lived in Council houses. Maybe she's right. She said, as she's said before, that "We've got the largest Council house building programme for a generation going on in Westminster," though she admitted that progress has been slow. "But it's really important that we don't have a policy that's just one-faceted." Other facets should welcome incomers, of the right kind: "We have people living outside London on very low incomes who spend huge percentages of their take home pay commuting, and yet they are vital to our economy. I think it's really important that we help and support those people, actually."

The interview came to an end. The table squeaked once more. I returned to those smooth, filthy rich lifts and headed back to the ground floor.