Jennifer Upjohn, a 39-year-old mother of four sons, was born and brought up in Lambeth. She has lived in the south London borough all her life, has family and friends nearby and supports her older mother who still lives locally. She has been on the Lambeth housing waiting list for over 19 years, since she was a teenager.
As a young mother she was constantly moved between hostels and short-term private rented housing, before being placed in long-term temporary accommodation with her sons and partner a decade ago.
The housing is overcrowded with damp and mould so bad that one bedroom is unsuitable for sleeping – her youngest child, who is in reception, suffers from breathing issues.
“It’s been so hard. It’s been really stressful,” she says. “I’ve been spending my own money buying mould paint. We had a leak in our roof that they took ages to come around to fix. The damp still comes through even in summer months as the roof is still wet.”
Despite bidding on available council properties every week, she has only had two offers of a permanent tenancy in a decade. One was in a high-rise with no lift when she was heavily pregnant with small children, and the other was in Slough, miles from her support network and her mother. She declined both.
Lambeth, where I’ve lived for 12 years, is known for vibrant Brixton, beautiful parks and leafy gentrified streets – but it is in the midst of a serious housing crisis. It has the largest housing waiting list of all London boroughs (joint with Newham), with 360,000 people waiting for stable accommodation – and thus likely to have the longest list in the country.
More than 6,000 Lambeth children are living in temporary accommodation. The wait time for a permanent home in the borough depends on individual needs, but the average wait is now almost seven years – far longer than the national average of three years. While researching this article, I connected with multiple local families with children who had been waiting more than a decade.
Lambeth is one of the most densely populated boroughs in the country, with high levels of deprivation, and is dealing with the same financial crisis as every other council. But it is facing criticism over its choices in how to spend what little it has. It is the most complained about council to the Housing Ombudsman, with complaints on housing rising 22 per cent in the last year, and 92% of them upheld by the ombudsman. In 2023 alone, the ombudsman made five severe maladministration findings against the council for its social housing provision, in cases including a family living with severe damp and mould, and another resident facing winter months without heating or hot water.
Ahead of this week’s local elections, the council’s poor record on housing, along with a host of other issues, is coming to the fore. Labour has been in control of Lambeth for more than 20 years, but the borough is being closely watched, with recent polling suggesting it will be a competitive race. The Green Party, revitalised under the leadership of Zack Polanski, has the potential to take control of Lambeth – though their local candidates have faced their own controversies. Two Green candidates in Lambeth, Sabine Mairey and Saiqa Ali, were arrested last week over alleged antisemitic social media posts. They have been removed from the party’s website and a spokesperson said these views did not reflect the party’s.
Lambeth Labour points out that austerity policies, rent caps and freezes from previous governments have placed “severe constraints” on its housing budget. A spokesperson told The i Paper that the party recognises that the housing crisis is one of the biggest challenges facing London. “Lambeth Labour has been working hard locally to tackle this, delivering 1,000 social and affordable homes, strengthening rights for more than 100,000 private renters, and recently receiving one of the highest ratings from the housing regulator.”
Having covered local government and public services for two decades, I was sceptical that Labour could really be under threat in Lambeth – that is, until I spoke to my local friends and neighbours. No doubt also encouraged by national events and disgruntlement at the disappointing leadership of Sir Keir Starmer, there is an appetite for change. Some residents feel that its long incumbency means the party is no longer listening to residents or making decisions in a democratic way.
There was particular anger over the introduction of a low traffic neighbourhood (LTN) in Streatham Wells, which caused such bad congestion that buses took two hours to travel three miles. Children were routinely late for school, and low-paid shift workers lost employment due to unreliable transport. The LTN was suspended – a move which was applauded (and, rumour suggests, forced through) by Sadiq Khan. Jacqueline*, a 47-year-old resident, said: “There was no transparency. There was no democracy and there was no accountability. The leadership is appalling: it’s just top down and it won’t face criticism.”
Housing keeps coming up as a crisis issue on the doorstep. Data compiled by the local Green and Liberal Democrat candidates shows Lambeth built no council houses in six of the last eight years, and has delivered 2 per cent of its social housing target. Lisa Schulkind, the Greens’ candidate in the Knight’s Hill ward, says: “Some of our criticism of Lambeth Labour is that they’ve been in power for 20 years and it’s like a castle: they do things from on high. They have a private developer mode whereby to a great extent they let the market rip and you get a tiny number of affordable homes and a tiny number of social homes. They’ve earmarked a lot of estates for demolition and not taken the community with them.”
The Lambeth Green Party acknowledges that success might require a higher turnout bringing new voters out to the polling booths. According to Jonathan Carr-West, chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit, the latest polling is strongly indicative of a loss for Labour in this heartland council area. “There are five parties consistently polling 20 per cent and that makes everything a lot more random,” he says. “What we can predict quite confidently is that people will be winning with much smaller vote shares and much smaller majorities. That does create a volatility that I think is quite new.”
But Carr-West also sounds a cautionary note. Even if there is an “earthquake” in Lambeth, he warns, there’s very little that the new administration, whether Green or Liberal Democrat or a rainbow coalition, could do to solve the spiraling local housing crisis. “Like any London borough, they’re spending the best part of 80% of their budget on children’s services and adult social care alone, which are both set out by statute with limited manoeuvre for what you do. Your potential for sweeping change is fairly limited.”
A spokesperson for Lambeth Labour said it was working hard with its residents and communities to improve its services. “Our recent budget engagement exercise was the council’s biggest ever.”
“Ultimately, the choice in Lambeth is clear: improved public services and new affordable and social homes with Labour, or risking chaos and uncertainty at a time when residents need action.“