MARC pushes for more affordable homes

MARC campaigning to save Greenfield sites

MARC (Morley against Reckless Construction) is scheduled to meet a Developer shortly to discuss MARC's plans for more appropriate affordable homes for local people. Many people believe - rather erroneously - that we are against all development. This is not the case. As residents will have seen with Liberty View, Kirkness Court and new homes on Glen Road, we are interested in new affordable homes in the right locations.

And this leads us to a discussion with a local Developer where we will be exploring the options to bring more bungalows to Morley which could accommodate older and disabled residents - many of whom are presently over accommodated. We are told that there is not a market for bungalows but we know that many older folk are in bigger Council owned properties and want to move to accommodation which is more appropriate. In these cases (and we saw this with Kirkness Court) we had larger Council homes returned to us which were offered to families on Morley's Housing Waiting List. As over 2,000 are on that list then anything we can do to try and make better use of  our publicly owned housing stock must be a good thing.

What we need is more appropriate accommodation, preferably on brownfield sites, which deliver the maximum number of affordable homes for local residents. This must include homes more suitable to older and disabled residents who can be better accommodated.

We are not doing any deals with the Devil but we are having an open and honest discussion with Developers about the potential way ahead. It is inevitable there will be some new homes built across Morley. We need to make sure that as many of them as possible are affordable and contribute positively to offering better housing options for all our communities.