11 April 2008
The minister responsible for communities has warned against housing developments creating 'social apartheid', dividing rich and poor.
Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears said: 'If affluence is used to create a separateness, a kind of social apartheid between rich and poor, with gated communities with private security, private schools and health care and a small but powerful section of society which never mixes with the rest of us, then that should give us real cause for concern.'
She was speaking at the launch of the Fabian Society's housing and community policy network.
Nick Johnson, policy director at the Institute of Community Cohesion, said it was refreshing to hear a government minister talk about the danger of social apartheid. 'There is a real potential problem here. Social segregation is a wider issue than one just about race and faith.'
Conservative shadow housing minister Grant Shapps said it was right that people should not be ghettoised, but that a division between rich and poor was not much of a danger. 'New developments need to be mixed tenures and the right-to-buy policy has done more to help create mixed communities.'
Blears' speech last week created some controversy by including Poundbury on a list of towns that 'owed more to paternalism and the aggrandisement of the benefactor, than real concern for residents'.
Mention of the Prince Charles-led development in Dorset drew criticism from Shapps, who said Blears was wrong to 'drag royalty' into the discussion.
'Poundbury is an incredible example of somewhere where you can't tell the difference between the one-third of affordable housing and the two-thirds that are not,' he said.
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