For further details, please follow this link.

This is taking place at 7.00pm on Thursday March 31 at English Martyrs RC Church, 2 Mitcham Lane, SW16 6NN (for a map, follow this link)

Redefine International confirmed to Mr Umunna that discussions are currently underway with a number of major retailers to secure the development’s anchor store, with confirmation of which store has reached a final agreement due by the end of March.

Mr Umunna was informed that work is set to begin early next year on the development, with the initial retail offering opening in 2013. The entire complex, including new homes, is due for completion in 2015.

Wentworth House on Sternhold Avenue, which was formerly occupied by a JobCentre office and has lain dormant for a number of years, is due to be demolished as part of the scheme. Mr Umunna has learned from Redefine International that Lambeth has now signed off permission for the building’s demolition, which will proceed shortly.

The developer hopes to convert the Wentworth House site into a temporary short-stay car park providing much-needed parking spaces for those using local shops, pending completion of the overall scheme. The change of use to a temporary short-stay car park is subject to council approval.

The entire development, with a site encompassing the former Caesar’s nightclub, Megabowl and adjacent properties, represents £75 million of inward investment in Streatham.

Commenting, Mr Umunna said:

“I am pleased that this redevelopment is moving forward and am pushing for it to be delivered as quickly as possible with the minimum of disruption to local residents.

“Everyone is agreed on the importance of regenerating this stretch of Streatham Hill and our High Road and the need to attract businesses to the area. I believe this project has the potential to deliver on both of these counts and improve our main shopping street.”

Speaking in a debate on the housing benefit changes, Mr Umunna said: “This is particularly pertinent to my constituency. The constituency that I represent is diverse not only ethnically but in regard to the socio-economic demographic of the people who live there”.

Mr Umunna recounted a recent conversation he had with a constituent on the doorstep who, although he did not receive housing benefit himself and fell within the top 1% of earners, was “horrified” at the likely impact of the housing benefit cuts on the local area: “One of the reasons he likes living in my constituency is the diverse nature of the streets and the different parts of the area. He said that he did not want to live in a street where all the people were like lim. He liked the fact there were different people living there.”

The government announced sweeping cuts to housing benefit in both the June Budget and last month’s Comprehensive Spending Review. These include caps relating to different sizes of property and a general cap of rates at the 30th percentile of local market rates, as well as cutting housing benefit for those who have been unemployed and searching for work for over a year.

Mr Umunna also spoke of the pressure which already exists on local housing stock, with a waiting list of over 22,000 in Lambeth for social housing and argued against the reduction of housing benefit for those seeking work for more than a year. According to DWP statistics, there are 865 people in Streatham who fall into this category and who would lose out as a result.

With property prices and rent levels being higher in inner London than elsewhere, the cuts will have a disproportionate affect on areas like Streatham and it is feared that they could lead to many being forced to leave the area entirely.

The housing benefit cuts announced in the June Budget will affect 5,470 households in Lambeth, including 1,520 two-bedroom households seeing their housing allowance fall by an average of £25 a week – totalling £1,300 a year.

Organisations and charities including the National Housing Federation have raised concerns over a potential increase in homelessness as a result of the government’s plans. Commenting on the changes, the NHF’s chief executive David Orr said: “Unless ministers urgently reconsider these punitive housing benefit cuts, we may see more people sleeping rough than at any stage during the last thirty years.”

Crisis chief executive Lesley Morphy, who Mr Umunna recently met with to discuss the housing benefit changes, said:

“Nearly half of those on LHA already face a shortfall between their benefit and their rent of an average of £23 per week, meaning tough choices between rent, food, heating or falling into a vicious spiral of debt.

“These cuts are huge and deadly serious and will affect people across the country, not just in London. We are calling on the Government to look at the facts and impacts and rethink the cuts now.”

Commenting, Mr Umunna said: “Our area will be disproportionately hit by what the government is doing to housing benefit.

“Ministers claim that they are cutting spending in a way which is fair to all parts of society, but these cuts to housing benefit will hit the poor and vulnerable hardest.”

A shortened version of the speech is below – to read it in full, please follow this link.

“I want to pick up on some comments made by Paul Uppal and my hon. Friend Roberta Blackman-Woods. They referred to the tenor of the national debate on this issue, which I have found deeply worrying, and how our newspapers in particular show unemployed people being divided from employed people, benefit recipients being divided from those who are not claiming benefits.

“We saw that division of rich and poor at the weekend with the headlines in some newspapers reflecting announcements from the Department for Work and Pensions. The Mail on Sunday said “New IDS blitz on the workshy”; the News of the World said “Work gangs for shirkers”; and The Sunday Telegraph said “Workshy will have to take unpaid jobs”.

“Today, we read that the Department has released figures showing that every family will have to pay more than £1,500 a year in taxes to fund the housing benefit system. As ever, it seems that a particular section of society has become a target. Has the Treasury released figures to show how much each family in this country loses as a result of tax evasion and avoidance by wealthy individuals and companies? It is extremely important that we do not allow the tactic of divide and rule to succeed.

“This is particularly pertinent to my community. The constituency that I represent is diverse not only ethnically but in regard to the socio-economic demographic of the people who live there. I spoke to one of my constituents about these issues last weekend. He and his wife live in one of the more leafy parts of Clapham common, an area known as Abbeville village, and he works for a private equity company. He is undoubtedly in the top 1% of earners. I asked him what he thought about the Government’s changes to the housing benefits regime. Given that they will not have a direct impact on him, I was surprised to find that he had strong views about them, and that he was horrified at their likely impact on his community.

“One of the reasons that he likes living in my constituency is the diverse nature of the streets and the different parts of the area. He said that he did not want to live in a street where all the people were like him. He liked the fact that there were different people living there. I mention this because it is important to understand that these changes will be an issue not only for people claiming housing benefit but for the community as a whole.

“Given the impact that the changes will have on my constituents, I do not feel that I am whipping up hysteria or unduly disturbing my community. I am simply looking at the facts. There are 5,470 households in Lambeth that will face huge cuts in housing benefit next year. For example, 1,520 households in two-bed properties in Lambeth will see the contribution to their rent reduced by an average of £25 a week. That is £1,300 a year, and those people simply cannot afford it. The changes will undoubtedly cause an increase in poverty in my constituency. Shelter is predicting that they will affect many of the claimants who live just above the poverty line, and they will undoubtedly lead to deep anxiety and stress among people who are already struggling to get by.

“I have outlined some of the effects on my community that we are able to discern, but there will be others that it is difficult to quantify at the moment. We are going to be faced with people moving from inner London to our part of Lambeth, seeking private rented accommodation. We have 22,000 people on social housing waiting lists in Lambeth, but we have no idea of the number who will seek social private rented housing in our area as a result of the changes. I mention that figure to demonstrate that we are already under huge pressure. There has been a lot of talk about introducing these measures to reduce the benefits bill, but we are told that rents will inevitably fall as well. London Councils, a cross-party organisation, has carried out a survey of landlords in London. I make no apology for talking about London, by the way; it is my area, and it is where my constituency is based. The survey found that 60% of landlords letting properties to housing benefit tenants in London said that they would not reduce their rents, even by a small amount, to accommodate the changes, and Shelter has found that 43% of such landlords will simply scale back their operations in this sector.

“I want to finish by mentioning a matter that I have already raised with the Chancellor of the Exchequer-the proposal to reduce by 10% the housing benefit of jobseeker’s allowance recipients who have been receiving JSA for more than 12 months. I challenged the Chancellor about this at a Treasury Committee hearing in July and asked him to provide me with evidence that that measure would produce increased work incentives, given that he said that that was why he was introducing it. Funnily enough, he quoted the Institute for Fiscal Studies back at me. It is funny how the coalition Government choose to ignore the IFS when it tells them things they do not want to hear, only to quote it back at me when they find it helpful. The Chancellor quoted an IFS report that found that “welfare benefits can have substantial effects on the work behaviour of unskilled and even for men with high school education”. Be that as it may, I do not see how there can be an incentive for people to work when there are no jobs for them to go into.

“In the past few weeks, information from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has shown that 1.6 million people are going to be out of work as a result of the measures being introduced by the Government. We already know that there are five people chasing every vacancy in the economy, and research shows that that figure is not going to fall.

Lambeth Head of Planning Les Brown will be on the panel along with specialist planning officers. The meeting will give local residents an opportunity to put forward their views on the issue and to put questions to representatives from Lambeth’s planning department.

The Liberal Democrat – Conservative government announced cuts to the Local Housing Allowance in June’s Budget, which applies to those on low incomes living in private rented homes. Claimants’ entitlement will reduce from 50 per cent of local rent levels to 30 per cent, while a new maximum allowance will be applied.

Because property prices and rent levels are higher in inner London than elsewhere, the cuts will have a disproportionate affect on areas like Lambeth and it is feared that they could lead to many being forced to leave the area entirely.

In Lambeth, 1,520 two-bedroom properties will see their housing allowance fall by an average of £25 a week – totaling £1,300 a year.

Commenting on the changes, David Orr, Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation said:“The housing benefit caps could see poorer people effectively forced out of wealthier areas, and ghettoised into poorer neighbourhoods.

“Some people affected by housing benefit caps may successfully find a home in cheaper areas, but many will end up in expensive bed and breakfast accommodation, while thousands will simply become homeless. Unless ministers urgently reconsider these punitive housing benefit cuts, we may see more people sleeping rough than at any stage during the last thirty years.”

Chuka Umunna MP said: “The government’s housing benefit cuts for those living in private rented accommodation are grossly unfair and, as these new figures show, will disproportionately affect areas like ours and many of my constituents.

“I am deeply concerned that people in Lambeth will be made homeless or forced to leave the area as a result.

“The Lib Dem Tory coalition government said it would implement public spending cuts in a way which would not heavily hit the poor and vulnerable – it is doing precisely the opposite with these measures.”

Lambeth Living, the arms – length management organisation which manages the Valley Road Estate, is due  to receive £233 million in Decent Homes programme funding; Lambeth’s other ALMO, United Residents  Housing,  is due to receive £25 million.

This funding is desperately needed so that Lambeth’s homes can be made safe, warm and secure. It will pay for new roofs, new boilers, new windows, new kitchens and new  bathrooms that are desperately needed by residents.

In its 13 years in government, Labour invested billions of pounds into improving the quality of social housing. 1.4 million homes have been improved in council stock alone, and £33bn was invested in bringing social housing up to a decent standard, including the  provision of new windows, heating, kitchens, and bathrooms. Around 300,000 homes nationally remain in line for these improvements under Labour’s Decent Homes programme — the future of which is now subject to the coalition’s Comprehensive Spending Review.

The Lambeth Living ALMO was established in 2008 in order to achieve a 2 – star service to obtain eligibility for Decent Homes programme funding, needed to bring all of the 33,000 homes in Lambeth’s housing stock  up to a ‘decent’ standard. There is now real concern that the new Government may not honour this capital commitment.

Earlier this year, Mr Umunna asked the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government a  Parliamentary Question about the future of the Decent Homes programme and what eligibility criteria would apply to proposals for the funding.

The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local  Government, Andrew Stunnell, a Liberal Democrat, answered that the criteria for the allocation of the funding would be dependent on the overall funding available to the Decent Homes programme, following the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review in October.

Mr Umunna said:

“Estates like Valley Road are a perfect example of the investment still needed to bring homes up to an acceptable standard. My constituents deserve warm, safe, decent homes in which to live and raise their  families and without the vital decent homes funding this simply isn’t attainable. Residents have already waited too long for the homes they deserve and it  is simply not acceptable that this money may now be withdrawn.”

Rt Hon John Healey, Shadow Minister for Housing , said:

“Labour believes that everyone has the right to a secure, affordable, decent home in a safe neighbourhood. I saw in my visit with Chuka Umunna to the Valley Road estate the important work that’s still needed to bring all homes in Lambeth up to a decent standard.

“It is vital that the new Government honour our Labour Government’s commitment to completing the decent
homes programme, both to fix residents’ broken central heating systems and rotting window frames, and to create hundreds of jobs in south London.”

The project, set to deliver 120 new homes on the Clapham Park estate was put on ice last month, being included in a list of housing projects agreed under the previous government subject to review and possible cancellation.

Clapham Park was shortlisted to benefit from £9 million of funding for new homes under Labour as part of the Kickstart scheme and was visited by the then Housing Minister John Healey in January.

Following the new government’s announcement, Chuka wrote to Housing Minister Grant Shapps and tabled a series of Parliamentary Questions demanding answers from ministers on the funding.

Thankfully, this week the Homes and Communities Agency has announced that the project will now go ahead as originally planned.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has written to housing association Clapham Park Homes to confirm that funding has now been approved for 120 new homes which had been agreed under the previous government.

Last month, the coalition published a list of housing projects under the Kickstart scheme which would face a review and possible cancellation.

Clapham Park was shortlisted to receive over £9 million of funding for new homes under the previous Labour administration, with its project having passed through due diligence processes.

After the new government’s announcement that the projects would be put on hold, Mr Umunna asked a series of parliamentary questions demanding answers from ministers on funding for the scheme and wrote to Housing Minister Grant Shapps to make representations.

Commenting, Mr Umunna said: “I am pleased that this essential home building project on the Clapham Park Estate will now go ahead and after the pressure exerted on the Conservative – Liberal Democrat government, it has decided to go ahead with the previous government’s commitments in this area.”

“I will continue to push the government on funding for housing in our local area, particularly money allocated under the last government to bring social housing up to an acceptable standard.”

Questions still remain on whether local arms-length management organisations Lambeth Living and United Residents Housing will be able to access Decent Homes funding, which the government is reviewing as part of its comprehensive spending review. Mr Umunna has also tabled parliamentary questions in this regard.