Cllr Kevin Price, who is set to become the Executive Councillor for Housing in the newly-elected Labour administration at Cambridge City Council, has announced plans to create a new Housing Committee. Cllr Price’s plans come after Labour won the City elections proposing to tackle the “Tale of Two Cities” which has seen some deprived areas of the City like Abbey and Kings Hedges feeling shut out of the City’s prosperity. Under the previous Lib Dem administration proposals for strategic housing matters and new affordable social housing were scrutinised at Community Services Committee with most other matters relating to council stock management dealt with by the Housing Management Board. Labour argued this system meant unnecessary duplication and an incomplete picture of the housing issues across the City in both the council and private rental sectors.

Cllr Price said: “A single Housing Committee bringing all housing matters under one umbrella will save on officer, councillor and tenant representative time. The Committee will not duplicate issues and will make sure officers, councillors and representatives at two committees are not discussing the same items.”

“The new Housing Committee will continue to give the tenant representatives the same rights as before. We welcome the contribution made by the tenant representatives over the years and look forward to that continuing on the new committee. Most importantly, the new Housing Committee shows Labour takes the whole city seriously by focusing more time and resources on developing good-quality council housing of which our city can be proud.”