It was life-affirming to meet the residents of Rainbow Way in Minehead. But so much still stands in the way of Labour’s vision for social housing
I
met Carole Guscott, a retired former carer, on a clear winter’s morning in the Somerset town of Minehead. She was walking her whippet, Gracie, on the way back to her new flat, past the local Premier Inn and on to a cul de sac called Rainbow Way. “I knew as soon as I saw it,” she told me. “I just thought: ‘I can make this place my home.’”
Up until recently, she was living in a private rented place near the centre of town and paying £780 a month in rent. For four years she had known that Rainbow Way was being built. She also knew that its houses and flats were an example of something that is vanishingly rare in post-Thatcher Britain: new council housing, which meant security for the people chosen to be the tenants but also intense competition for places.
But she then got a call, and an invitation to come and have a look. “I was stunned,” she said. She instantly decided to move in, paying just over £500 in monthly rent, and delighting in the views of the surrounding hills and townscape. “The flat is just so open and bright,” she told me. “I feel blessed that I’m here.” She also said: “Without a council house, there just isn’t the security.”
