On 7th May, those living in Southampton and above 18yrs old will be able to vote in the local elections. I sat down with the Labour Party’s Candidate for Portswood, Cllr Marie Finn, to ask her questions about housing, public transport, crime, community, and Gaza.
B: Firstly, tell me a bit about yourself.
M: My name is Marie Finn, I am a Labour councillor for Portswood, and I’ve got a background as a mental health social worker. I am a parent, grandparent, dog owner, and I’ve lived an awful long time locally. I came to university here in the 1980s and never left.
B: Why are you running again, and why did you run in the first place?
M: I ran for councillor in the first place just because I wanted to make a difference and improve the area, because I could see things that could be improved.
I’m running again because, even though I’ve found out things move more slowly than I would like them to, and it can be quite frustrating to say the least, there are things I can see that are underway, and improvements are happening, and I would really like to follow those things through.
Just today, I’ve had three phone calls from residents who’ve got issues they’d like help with, and it’s issues that affect everyone. It’s a privilege to help people out, and it helps the whole community, which is why I’m standing again.
B: Housing, as you are well aware, is very important amongst students. What are your plans to improve housing in Portswood and Southampton in general?
M: For students in general, it is obviously mainly to do with the private rental sector. I know there are the purpose-built student blocks, and I’ve never had a student contact me with concerns about those – I presume they would just go to their landlord directly.
The problems we get in the private rented sector in Portswood are mainly around repairs not being done, standards, and people being afraid of reporting repairs for fear of eviction. I’ve also had some students report problems with infestations, who’ve also feared reporting that.
The new Renters’ Rights Act, which comes into effect in May, will be really helpful as it stops Section 21 evictions. There was also a scrutiny enquiry last year about the private rented sector in Southampton as a whole, and there’s a survey underway of all the private rented housing in Southampton, and a lot of those are HMOs [Houses of Multiple Occupancy], so the survey can get a baseline to check that people have got the absolute essentials. I must admit, the worst examples I have seen of housing haven’t been student houses, but other people living in shared housing.
The other big problem is the cost of housing, and that’s not just a problem for students but a problem for everybody. The only way we’re going to improve that is if we build more houses, because that reduces the competition between the HMOs and the smaller units of housing available. We have plans. Houses are being built in the city, but there are an awful lot more. We’ve got plans to use infill spots in the estates, but the more housing we have generally, the less pressure there is on the limited housing stock the council has, and the housing students would want. The other issue that has come up from students is housing for people with disabilities.
So, my plan is to just really push on enforcement. Also, something we’ve got on our budget for next year is getting a new enforcement team so we can do something when there are environmental health issues in houses, and to make sure that landlords actually do the repairs that are needed. In terms of bringing down the costs, which is a much more long-term issue, building as much housing in the area as possible would be a help.
B: You mention the importance of building new housing, and to my understanding, a lot of the housing being built is being set out by the central government. But as a local Labour councillor, what’s your plan to build housing in Southampton?
M: I mentioned infill housing. So, various estates around Southampton have got bits of land between housing that’s already there. So, the plan is to build houses there. This isn’t a student issue, but what the city needs is more houses, especially three-bedroom houses, because the Right-to-Buy legislation, which I fundamentally disagree with, has meant that we’ve lost a lot of our bigger housing stock.
So, the biggest housing problem we’ve got in the city is that we’ve got a lot of families who are stuck in two-bedroom accommodation with multiple children and parents sleeping on sofas. So, we need to build houses for them, and that’s our top priority.
I know that’s not a student issue, but I’m just telling you the truth. But actually, it is a student issue because we get lots of students who go to university in their own hometowns, and if you’re living in overcrowded accommodation, how do you then do your studies?
When private housing gets built, they want to build student blocks because students are allowed to have smaller amounts of space because they go home for the holidays, or they want to build more flats because it’s more money for the developers. So, what we need more of as a city is a lot more family housing.
Obviously, there are quite a lot of flats being built already, which is good, but the other thing we’re doing is bringing more houses back into use. So, if you walk around Swaythling, Portswood, and Highfield, there are really big, beautiful houses that are boarded up and run down. We have found a plan, as the Labour administration, to take over those properties in a legal way. It’s not exactly a compulsory purchase because, once we’ve recouped our money, we have to give it back to the landlord. But we have to say that the landlord doesn’t make it fit for habitation, so we can take it over and make it fit for habitation, and then rent it out, and that increases the housing stock.
And it just breaks my heart to see people homeless or paying huge amounts for scarce housing, and we have these huge houses that are being left empty, and it’s just morally wrong. We’ve got a budget allocated to start work on that, and I’ve sent forward photos of houses in Portswood to be part of this plan.
B: The Daily Echo reported that there’s a £75m gap between the cost of improving the council’s stock of housing and the funding available. Where would you find that money from?
M: The housing revenue account is a separate account from the council’s budgets. I’m not an expert in housing finance, but I know it needs to work within itself. I thought the council had brought quite a lot of the houses up to standard, but what they have to do is ensure a bathroom and a kitchen are up to standard every thirty years. So, if it’s been thirty-one years, that house will be substandard, and they will need a new bathroom or kitchen. But in terms of people living in them, they’re still okay, and they would last, so we haven’t got to do it all straight away.
However, some things are really urgent, but the housing revenue account has to pay for itself – you can’t just go into other budgets to pay for those repairs. And that’s the problem with freezing rents, because if you freeze rents, you’d think it would help people, but it means that there’s less money to do repairs, and so you have to increase council rents. Plus, council rents are already cheaper than private rents, but they do have to increase with inflation. There were some years where the rents were frozen, and that did increase the backlog.
B: So there has been a pilot scheme of selling five council houses that aren’t of good quality, so that they can be prepared.
M: But the money from that is then invested in buying other houses.
B: But to my knowledge, from people who have gone to housing meetings, that money wouldn’t actually go into buying or building new houses, and there’s no real guarantee of that even happening. Plus, the auction of the five council houses would total between £375,000 and £500,000, but the repair costs are between £300,000 and £500,000. So, is this policy just short-term thinking and not actually going to help housing in Southampton?
M: I don’t think it’s short-term thinking. I think they’ve decided to rationalise it. If there are houses that are just so expensive to repair, they just think we may as well sell them to be repaired and focus on the houses we can repair. We’ve bought quite a few houses recently. Which budget stream that’s come out of, I don’t know, I haven’t got the budget papers on me, but we’ve just been to council to make an agreement to do it all over again.
So, we did invest in purchasing some houses, and then we’ve had an agreement to go buy some more. The absolute right criticism of this is that it would be great to just build some new houses, because by selling houses, you’re not increasing the stock, and that’s a very valid criticism. But we have spent a lot of time thinking about it, and it’s really important that we are a good landlord, and it makes sense to me to sell off the houses we cannot afford and use that money to repair the houses we’ve already got.
One of the things they talk about a lot in housing is the voids – the council housing where people have moved out or died and they’re not in a fit state to be re-let – and that’s an absolute scandal and a lot of work has been done in the last three of four years to improve on that and to ensure there’s less voids by doing as many repairs as possible.
B: I just want to go back to the pilot sales. The Daily Echo calculated that the cumulative net revenue loss of selling these houses would be £400,000 after forty years. So, it really does look like short-term thinking because you will just be losing money in the long term.
M: But if you’re using that money to repair the houses that we’re not getting any revenue from, then you get the rent from that.
B: More specifically, for housing for students, the University of Southampton wanted to build more halls on Avenue Campus, but due to disagreements from the local community, it was cancelled, and it was quite controversial amongst students. What was your position on the halls for the Avenue Campus?
M: I was opposed to it after a lot of residents spoke to me. Some of it was around the ecological impact on the Little Common (the part of the Common opposite Avenue Campus), and there are quite a lot of residents living between Highfield Hall and Avenue Campus, and they were really concerned, considering the amount of noise they get already from students.
But I’m really interested to hear you say it was because of the community response to it, because the University told me that they were concerned about how many students they could get in there, and also student safety being better placed on Wessex Lane. So, I’m quite interested to hear you say that it was community action, which is great to hear that it worked.
B: My citation is in part from reports from the Daily Echo, but also it was one of the key points made by the Green candidate for Portswood, which just stuck out in my head.
M: Yes, we worked across parties on that. All the councillors agreed, and we had a lot of residents come out and march to the Avenue Campus about it, on an especially rainy day as well, so there was a really strong feeling among the community. That won’t mean it won’t go ahead at some point in the future – I said to residents to keep their eyes close to the ground – but my concerns were mainly ecological and residents’ opposition to it.
The good thing about Wessex Lane is that, because you’ve got loads of students around there, if people are making a huge noise, it’s not such a big deal, and there aren’t many resident houses around there. And it’s really important because we want to be a welcoming area for students, and we don’t want a situation where residents feel antagonistic towards students. I think locally we like our students; many of us were students here and stayed. It’s a studenty area – people come here and like it. But we’ve got to maintain a balance, and I think if the halls on Avenue went ahead, it would’ve tipped that balance and would’ve been really sad.
B: There’s quite a high rate of violence in Portswood. It is by far the highest crime in the ward, with 108/288 crimes in January in Portswood being violent crimes. How do you plan to tackle violence in Portswood?
M: The cabinet member for communities, Cllr Toqeer Kataria, has been incredibly helpful, especially around students. He’s been meeting with the police and the university, especially since the death of Henry Nowak on Bellmont Road. He’s been letting people know about any issues that come up. For example, the protests outside Highfield Hotel have been very threatening, especially for non-white students. They’ve been doing joint communications with the police, city council, the university, and students to ensure the students receive updates to ensure their safety. [Note: since the interview, the protests outside Highfield Hotel have been paused indefinitely.]
There are different types of violent crimes and different reasons for them. A fair whack of that will be domestic violence, and there’s a whole scheme for violence against women and girls. Rather than thinking about reducing crime in Portswood, it’s about how you reduce crime generally. The key thing is to get people to report everything, even if it seems minor, because the more we get a zero-tolerance approach to it, the more the police know where to be and at what times. Some of it is break-ins, some of it is fights, some of it is to do with the nighttime economy.
The street pastors are actually very helpful because it’s not about crime reduction but rather public safety – keeping students safe and other vulnerable people safe. Having a night bus is really important. In terms of messaging, it happens for women but not for men, but sending the message of walking home with your mates. But the majority of violence does happen within the home, and it’s really important for people to know that if you are in a risky situation, there are ways to seek help.
B: You mention the protests outside Highfield Hotel. Do you think that’s a significant part of the violence in the area?
M: No, I don’t think it’s a significant part of the violence. I hope it isn’t. There’s crime, and there’s fear of crime, and both are really important, because if you’re fearful of crime, that’s going to affect your mental health. Residents have spoken to me about feeling really threatened because they’re just going about their day and being met with people dressed as crusaders, and they find that intimidating. So, no, I’m not saying the protests are causing violence, but I think people may be fearful.
People have said that they’ve experienced an increase in racial abuse in the area, whereas Portswood has always been a very tolerant area to live in. The police have said that they haven’t had an increase in hate crimes reported, but anecdotally, residents are saying it is increasing, but I guess they don’t report it.
The other issue, of course, is lights. The streetlights were turned off at night, I think, after the Ukraine War, when power bills went through the roof. And one of the ways we dealt with that was by surveying residents to find ways to save money, and one of the answers was turning off the lights between 1 am and 5 am. Only 50% of the lights are turned off in the main areas, but there are some streets where the lights are switched off. That’s being reviewed as well because if people are more fearful of violence, then that’s not good for people’s well-being. There’s also technology now where you can have the lights on but only at 50% or 20%, which is a compromise people might want to consider. I’m not saying that will reduce violence, I don’t actually think it will, but it might make people feel safer.
B: Moving on, lots of students have complicated feelings about the public transport in Southampton. Some think it’s not great, some think it’s really good, and this is often based on what the individual is used to back home. So, what would you do to improve public transport in Southampton?
M: What I would like to see locally is some of the bus routes shifted to give more bus availability to those who don’t currently have it, and I think that would add to student safety as well. I go to the bus partnership meetings, and the bus provider prefers to just have a specific route to go down.
So, for example, we have two roads in Portswood: Winn Road and Westwood Road. These roads both have bus stops on them, and both are full of housing associations and blocks for older people. Winn Road has a bus going down it every 10 minutes (and that’s why the road surface is rubbish; it needs resurfacing), but Westwood Road doesn’t have any buses going down it anymore because the buses only go down one road, but there’s no way of getting from one to the other. So, all the older people on that road who can’t drive are disadvantaged here, and it often costs them £9 to get a taxi to the hospital. So, I think there needs to be some flexibility around bus routes – there’s no reason why that bus going down Winn Road can’t divert slightly to Westwood Road once an hour.
Beyond that, one good thing that’s happened in Southampton is that we’ve been able to increase the number of people getting buses. But I really think there’s an issue of availability. I think it’s an issue of safety. If people are on a bus route, it makes everybody safer. If we can have a really fast transport system running through the city, it can get cars off the roads and improve the air quality. We have been very good at that, though in Southampton. Unusually, we’ve been able to get bus usage higher than pre-COVID levels in Southampton, so well done, people of Southampton, for getting onto buses. But there are a lot of people who live in Eastleigh who work in Southampton, and if we can improve the bus connections between us, we can improve air quality and keep cars off the roads.
B: You’ve also spoken out about wanting to change the bus pass rules for people with disabilities. Just from how I perceived it, it looked like you had to go to the press to try to seek change for it. Alex Winning, the Leader of the Council, has said he is currently reviewing the issue. Have there been any updates on that?
M: He’s actually quite keen on it. The press came to me, so I didn’t go to them to push for it. It was brought to my attention by a resident in Portswood, and I hadn’t even realised there was a difference. Nationally, disabled bus passes only get used from 9:30 am. But a lot of disabled people work or study. If you’ve got a disability and a job that starts at 9 am, you often need to get public transport to get there. I dug into it, and we’ve got employment schemes for getting disabled people into work, and I asked them about it, and it turned out that they’re having to give people money to go to training courses which start at 9 am. So, it doesn’t necessarily save the council money.
Southampton’s better than nationally – our disabled bus passes start at 9 am, whereas nationally they have to start at 9:30. But I don’t think it would cost us that much to bring it earlier. Alex Winning has asked the officers, and they’re getting back to us with the funds for how much it would cost – we have to cost everything.
For me, it’s about creating a level playing field. It’s not about treating everyone the same; some people would ask, “Why should they? Other people have to pay to get the bus to work, but actually, an able-bodied person could walk or cycle.
B: Moving on, this next issue is often a single-issue vote for students, and that issue is Gaza. The Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Southampton has said that the Hampshire Pension Fund is investing over £336m in over 50 arms companies, which are complicit in the genocide. As a councillor and a cabinet member, would you like to see the Hampshire Pension Fund divest from that, and what would you do about it?
M: I am a signatory to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign divestment declaration. So yes, I would like to see the pension fund divest. But because it’s the Hampshire Pension Fund, not the Southampton one, we only get one seat on the board. So, I spoke to Simon Letts, the cabinet member for finance, and what he said was that the last time they did a member’s survey to see what they wanted the pension fund to disinvest from, members said gas and oil. Apparently, Israel didn’t come up, which I was quite surprised by, but that would be another angle in. But yes, I would like to see the fund divest from Israel.
B: Lots of students will feel, though, that your government – the Labour government – aren’t doing enough on Israel and are, in many ways, complicit with their crimes. Would you agree with their assessment that the government isn’t doing enough?
M: I don’t know what else the government can do at the moment. What do they want the government to do that they’re not doing?
B: So, for example, they could stop selling F-35 components to Israel, they could impose sanctions on Israel. Those are just two examples. Plus, lots of the rhetoric from the government is very pro-Zionist, rhetoric which many students ardently disagree with. What’s you take on that?
M: I think it’s really complicated. I’m obviously very horrified by what the Israeli state has done in Gaza, and to see all those families being killed is awful. The current government in Israel is very right-wing, and they’ve done some very horrific things. I’m also very aware that there is a lot of concern among the Jewish communities that they are being picked on or being held to blame for something Israel is doing. I think it really needs careful handling.
I’m absolutely appalled by the Hamas attack, but the response from Israel was excessive beyond belief. The whole situation has gotten extremely out of hand. It’s not something I’m an expert in, so I’m a bit reluctant to start jumping in and making grand statements in a brief interview. I think this is something we could have a really long and detailed conversation about.
But in terms of locally, one of the things that worries me is that you get hostility. I came into politics in the 1980s when it was all ‘unite the fight against fascism!’ and everyone was on the same page. And it makes me really sad now that some Jewish people, not all, but some, are feeling excluded or being treated as though they are bad guys. Not all people in Israel are murderous. Some of the people who died in the Hamas attack were peace campaigners, which is really sad. So, I think it really needs a long conversation.
I’m not gonna give any quick, glib answers. Economic sanctions can be very useful – they were very useful in stopping apartheid South Africa – so I think it’s something that could be looked at if things don’t get better. But it seems the world has gone mad. But as a local councillor, what can I do about it? I really don’t know. I think the important thing is to keep relations within the community as positive as possible and just make a really strong statement that responding to violence with more violence is not the way to go – it’ll just make everything a lot worse for everybody.
B: Moving back to more local issues, one student asked, “How would you build community within Portswood and Southampton more generally?”
M: I think we’ve got a pretty good community. Southampton is more like a series of villages – a lot of cities are like that – so I think there’s quite a good community within Southampton. Whether students feel that would be good to know.
I live in St. Deny’s, which has a very strong community. It’s got lots of community groups. It’s an area where people will talk to their neighbours. The Highfield is very similar – there are crime WhatsApps.
The area that needs more help in building community is the central Portswood area because, though there are some long-term residents, there’s quite a lot of turnover because it’s quite a studenty area, so maybe fewer people are invested in it. So, it gets a lot of fly-tipping and rubbish. The park is quite run-down. So, cross-party, we’ve been trying to help build community in that area by having regular litter picks, we’re investing in the local park there, so there’s somewhere for the children to go. The police have done a good job in clearing up the anti-social behaviour related to drugs in the park – some parents said they didn’t want to bring their children to the parks because they felt like it wasn’t safe for their children, so we worked with the police to try and sort that problem out. So, I think that’s how we improve the community in that area, but I think in general, Portswood has quite a strong community.
One of the other things this Labour administration has done is give out small grants to communities. So, a ‘Friends Of…’ group for a particular park can apply to get a bench or some wildflowers in the park to help improve the community. Some of the older people in Portswood said having those extra benches in the parks really helped because it let them sit down and chat.
B: As a concluding question, why do you think people should vote for you?
M: Because I live locally, I’m hard-working – I’m very hard-working – and I’ll fight for residents to get their needs met, and I’m passionate about improving the area.
If you have any further questions you would like to ask Cllr Marie Finn, you can email her here: councillor.a.finn@southampton.gov.uk
You can read the interview for the Green Party candidate on the Wessex Scene.
The Liberal Democrat candidate turned down the interview over questions about Gaza
