Money for Grahame Park is welcome, but the key problem is that this is not going to provide any extra genuinely affordable homes for Grahame Park, or anywhere else for that matter, homes that are desperately needed.

The Conservatives have made clear time and again that they are not interested in providing homes for less well off people. They only want wealthy people who are ‘good Conservative voters’, in an echo of the scandalous and unlawful gerrymandering of Westminster City Council in the 1980s. All they are doing is speeding up that process.

We desperately need more homes for local people to live in – for the adult children of local families who haven’t a prayer of being able to stay in the area where they grew up; for those who keep our borough going, and not just those who empty our bins and sweep our streets; not just those who deliver our letters, like the postman I met at Hendon’s sorting office last week facing eviction by the council from his West Hendon flat, where he has lived as a ‘temporary’ tenant for 11 years; not just those who work in local cafés and shops; but now even young teachers and doctors who are also priced out of Colindale’s new homes.

If the Conservatives really cared about the ordinary people of Grahame Park (as they have deigned to find out where it is and visit it for a photo opportunity) and Hendon, that money could and should have been spent on making available genuinely affordable renting for local people – hundreds of extra homes from those going up in their thousands and earmarked for sale on the open market at ever inflating prices in Colindale, rather than speeding up and fuelling the property bubble, which it is set to do.

Andrew Dismore

Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Hendon