Around 50 people joined a midday march through Rothwell against plans to demolish around 70 ex-coal board homes on the Wordsworth and Sugar Hill estates in nearby Oulton.
Iain Dalton, Leeds Socialist Party
Thursday 26th July saw the Save Our Homes LS26 campaign and their supporters, including the NUM and the local Labour councillor for Rothwell, marched through the town centre, with widespread local media coverage.
Pemberstone plan on demolishing their homes, to be replaced with expensive executive housing for sale, of which just 15% willl be ‘affordable’ homes (ie. 10). The company is claiming that no-one will be forced to leave their homes.
Pemberstone, based in Worcester, is also the landlord of two tower block in Manchester with Grenfell-style cladding where leaseholders are expected to pay £10,000 for the cost of replacing it.
On the demo, Socialist Party members raised the need to ‘name and shame’ Pemberstones, in a similar way to how Butterfields E17, were forced to sell properties on the Butterfields Estate and keep tenants in their homes in a campaign led by Socialist Party members in Walthamstow in 2016.
The Socialist Party believes that Leeds City Council should take over the homes and turn them into council housing stock, not at an inflated price that boosts Pemberstone’s profits, but at a price that includes Pemberstone covering the cost of any necessary renovations to the housing which they have failed to carry out. Until the tenants get this security of tenure, with an elected committee to approve any proposed renovations, the whole of the labour & trade union movement locally should get behind their campaign.
The campaigns website can be found at saveourhomesls26.org, information about the Butterfields Won’t Budge campaign can be found on the Socialist Party national website.
