Sales help Enfield Council reduce its £1bn debt but comes amid acute homelessness crisis, reports Simon Allin, Local Democracy Reporter

This house in Cecil Road sold for £750,000 (credit Google)

Enfield Council has come under fire for selling off “desperately needed” family homes as the borough faces a chronic housing shortage.

Three properties were recently put up for auction by the council with a total value of nearly £2million after being classed as “surplus or underperforming assets”.

A two-bedroom semi-detached property in The Ridgeway, Botany Bay, sold for £550,000, while a four-bedroom detached house in Cecil Road, Enfield Town, went for £750,000. A three-bed semi in Church Hill, Winchmore Hill, was initially on the market for £600,000 but was later withdrawn.

Council bosses decided earlier this year to market the homes in a bid to cut borrowing and support the authority’s capital programme. The council has built up debts of more than £1billion, partly to fund new housing schemes such as Meridian Water in Edmonton.

But local housing campaigner Matt Burn attacked the sell-off, which comes as the council is now spending around £500,000 a month on hotel accommodation for homeless families amid a chronic housing shortage exacerbated by the collapse of the borough’s private rental sector.

Matt, from campaign group Better Homes Enfield, said: “The council needs to sell assets to manage the huge debts it has run up to fund Meridian Water. The upshot of this approach is that council-owned family homes such as these, which would be ideal for homeless families and which are desperately needed, are being sold off.

“The council justifies this by letting them fall into disrepair. The result is that homeless families will now be left living in cramped hotels on the A10 for far longer.”

The Conservative opposition group previously tried to block the sales, calling in the decision to a meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny committee in March. The Tories questioned why the homes were not being refurbished or brought back into use for rental.

Conservative leader Alessandro Georgiou claimed the council was selling off sites and opening them up to developers because it had “run out of money”. He added: “The point is, they feel like they have to sell off sites to balance the books, when they should not be in that reality in the first place.”

Cllr Georgiou said council was also trying to offload Green Belt land to raise cash – as much as £800m according to a presentation by officers this year – yet at the same time could find the money to buy sites outside the borough. The council last year bought a property in Potters Bar to help develop Green Belt land.

Enfield Council has been approached for comment.

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