Teachers Housing Plea

12.00.00am GMT Thu 13th Feb 2003

Local teachers joined a rally of the National Union of Teachers last week pressing for help with housing.

Vincent Cable, MP, sent a message of support and raised the issue with Education Ministers in parliament.

The problems are typified by a local borough primary school teacher who is "desperate for help" and wrote to the two borough MPs last week after being rejected for housing by Richmond Council, being placed 1297th on the Wandsworth list (where she currently lives temporarily) and is struggling to cope with rents and student debt.

Vincent Cable said: "Young teachers entering the professions are one of the groups of key workers who simply cannot afford to live locally, aggravating the teacher shortage."

"They are competing for scarce affordable social housing with homeless people and cannot pay private rents or mortgages."

"The distressed teacher, who approached me, was told that there were only 3 or 4 properties available a year for people like her in the borough."

"We are in the absurd position of having some of the best schools in the country and one of the best teacher training colleges (St Mary's) but young teachers cannot afford to stay".

"It is scarcely news that there is a local housing shortage. But of the hundreds of houses being shoe-horned in on every bit of spare land in the borough virtually none of them will be affordable, or allocated, to people like this young teacher".