Replace Social 'Slums', Says North Belfast MLA

An Stormont assemblyman has raised concerns over the Housing Executive's shift in priority, from more building houses to improving current stock.

Ulster Unionist Fred Cobain said he was troubled by the greater emphasis place on refurbishment rather than redevelopment.

Targeting his questions at the Social Development Minister, Margaret Ritchie, who oversees social housing, Mr Cobain said: "We were told in the Programme for Government that 1,500 new social and affordable homes were going to be built.

"A number of weeks ago, the Minister corrected me to tell me that we did not need 2,500 new homes, as I had said, but that we needed 3,000 new social homes."

He said: "I am old enough to remember the previous period of refurbishment in the 1970s and 1980s; instead of knocking down the slums in Belfast, the Housing Executive refurbished them.

"The slums that were refurbished in the 1970s and 1980s are the same slums that people are living in today."

Mr Cobain said the department, instead of knocking them down and building "proper twenty-first century homes", wants to refurbish them.

"These people deserve the same as everybody else in our society. This is not an Executive for the haves and not for the have-nots. It is time to act," he added.

(PR/BMcC)