East Midlands Mayor: What all six candidates have to say about housing
We've spoken to all six of the region's mayoral candidates ahead of polls opening next week.
Last updated 22nd Apr 2024
Next week, we're heading to the polls to elect the first ever regional mayor for the East Midlands.
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire will choose who will head up the new Combined County Authority on Thursday, May 2nd.
It follows a devolution deal was signed with the Government, to divert some decision-making powers from Westminster up to the East Midlands.
The deal will provide £1.14bn in funding, spread over 30 years.
The mayor will be in charge of that pot of cash, have authority to make more major decisions locally, and be tasked with bringing more investment to the region.
The candidates are Frank Adlington-Stringer (Green Party), Ben Bradley (Conservatives), Alan Graves (Reform UK), Matt Relf (Independent), Helen Tamblyn-Saville (Liberal Democrats) and Claire Ward (Labour).
All six have spoken to us, outlining their priorities.
Here's what they have to say about the issue of housing:
Frank Adlington-Stringer (Green Party)
Frank Adlington-Stringer was born in Chesterfield and is North East Derbyshire’s first-ever Green Party councillor.
We spoke with him about his plan to start a "Green industrial revolution" at Cromford Mills, near Matlock.
"Housing in this country is broken. I'm a 26 year old that lives at home with my mum, I know how difficult it is for young people to get on the housing ladder.
"I want to make sure that as your mayor, we're delivering affordable, sustainable homes for people and that they're council owned, because it's important that we lead the way and that we encourage the private sector to follow too.
"I also want to unleash a huge retro-fitting programme to make sure that we're insulating the homes of other people, making sure that their bills come down through that process.
"There's so much that we can do to tackle mould, to tackle damp, to tackle the cost of living and we have to get on with that from day one.
"I want to get a land, spacial plan to make sure we're building in the right places and I'm going to involve people in that through our citizens assemblies, making sure we know the areas we want to keep wild, making sure we know the areas that we can build on and putting brown field as a priority over green field".
Ben Bradley (Conservative Party)
Ben Bradley was born in Derby and is the current leader of Nottinghamshire County Council and the Conservative MP for Mansfield.
We spoke to him about his plans to bring "major investment" to the region in his Mansfield constituency.
"We've got a big opportunity to plan housing properly for the long term.
"At the minute councils end up building as many houses they can in the quickest, most profitable places they can find and they're very rarely the right places.
"The opportunity here is to work together to plan properly, strategically, to find right and appropriate sites and deliver the right kind of housing.
"We can bring forward brown field sites with new funding, deliver more residential in empty town centre properties for example.
"Or we can collectively push developers to deliver better quality housing, better environmental regulations for housing, more funding for infrastructure.
"So there's absolutely loads we can go at that means we can both deliver more housing but make sure that it's the right kind of housing and in the right places".
Alan Graves (Reform UK)
Alan Graves became a Reform UK councillor in 2020, and was elected mayor of Derby in May 2023.
Speaking to us in Derby, he said his only priority is to abolish the position as East Midlands Mayor.
"As far as housing is concerned, what we need to do is make sure the money is spent in the right place.
"I've been courted by quite a lot of organisations who want the money that the East Midlands mayor is bringing to them and what I would like to see is that shared out in a local sense, to the local people, where that matters most"
Matt Relf (Independent)
Matt Relf has been a councillor for Ashfield District Council for almost five years.
He is the cabinet member responsible for economic regeneration.
"With housing, the planning powers aren't moving to the mayor, they will stay with all the councils and the peak authority that it sits with at the minute.
"So this role is very much going to be about working those planning powers, those planning authorities to change how we're doing things jointly.
"The focus is very much going to be on making sure we're building the right houses in the right places because at the minute the planning focuses too much on profitability for developers rather than what society needs.
"We need to change that to make sure we're building the right houses. SO we've got starter homes, we've got retirement homes that free up those family homes that builders keep doing.
"We also need to do it in such a way that we're building them carbon neutral because it's so important to reduce the energy bills of those people that are buying the houses.
"Yes they might be more expensive to build and buy, but that is easily off set by the amount of money you save per month by having lower energy bills.
"So with all of that combined, we'll be building the right homes in the right places"
Helen Tamblyn-Saville (Liberal Democrats)
Helen Tamblyn-Saville lives in Retford and owns a children's book shop.
She also stood in the 2019 General Election in Bassetlaw and works as a district councillor for Retford West.
"One of my priorities as mayor for the East Midlands is to ensure that we have more housing.
"Housing that is affordable, but not only that, we need much more social housing...it's so desperately needed".
"Houses should be built on brown field land where appropriate and infrastructure should be in place from the word go.
"It is absolutely essential that housing is built to a green standard.
"I would push for passive house standards. We know that building is responsible for 35% of global energy emissions and it is essential that we push for good quality house standards that are energy efficient.
"This helps people in the long run as well as it makes energy bills more affordable which is so important in this cost of living crisis, while helping us reach our net zero goals.
"So simply, more affordable housing, much more social housing and housing that is energy efficient, helping us work towards net zero".
Claire Ward (Labour Party)
Claire Ward was first elected as MP for Watford in 1997.
She moved to Nottinghamshire in 2010 and is now chair Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
"Across this region, too many people have to move away because we haven't got the affordable homes that we need.
"So I want to build those homes that we need.
"I'll take a common sense approach, building homes on derelict, industrial land across our cities.
"I'll bring hundreds of empty properties back into use and I'll unlock brownfield land so that we can build more homes in partnership with our local councils.
"And of course those homes need to be future-proofed, that means being energy efficient and carbon neutral. Making the most as well of how we can retro-fit our existing homes.
"I want to tackle homelessness and rough sleeping, so I'm going to set up a homelessness task force, bringing together all of the charities that are already involved so we can end this terrible blight for people's lives.
"And I'll champion housing schemes that support our most vulnerable and our veterans here in this region.
"That's what I'm going to do to make us a better place to live, to work and to learn"
You can here more from the candidates in our news bulletins all this week.