Labour has refused to explain its election claim that the Greens voted to block 857 affordable homes in Lambeth – or to say whether the figure includes the affordable homes in the a high-rise scheme that its cabinet member for housing, Streatham councillor Danny Adilypour, claims to have opposed in his own ward.

Cllr Adilypour had replied to earlier questions about other disputed campaign claims made about the Liberal Democrats, defending Labour’s attacks on the party.

But when StreathamStuff asked if the manifesto claim included 81 “affordable” homes that he says he opposed in Streatham Common and Vale, he said it was a media enquiry that should be directed to Lambeth Labour. The party didn’t respond to StreathamStuff’s email.

The claim – made in Labour election leaflets and in the party’s manifesto – is “completely made up”, Brixton Buzz has quoted Lambeth Green Party leader Scott Ainslie as saying.

Cllr Ainslie did vote against the four-block development now underway on the former Homebase site on Woodgate Drive, when the project went before the council’s planning committee in 2024.

He was the sole non-Labour councillor on the committee, which voted by four to two to approve the 237-apartment scheme, of which 35% should be “affordable”.

Cllr Adilypour has always insisted that he backed a residents’ campaign against the scheme, which includes a tower more than 50m high, and opposed the development.

“As your local Labour ward councillors we support the principle of this site being developed to provide new homes, but we do not believe the development proposals in their current form are in the best interests of the local community,” the Common and Vale councillors posted on their Facebook account, in 2024.

Labour’s claims reported as “knowingly false”

The Green Party housing claim comes on top of Labour attacks on the LibDems, including claims that the party had “cut the council’s budget by 50%” and planned to cut the Freedom Pass, which gives free travel on public transport to Londoners who are over 66 or disabled.

Lambeth LibDem leader Donna Harris has since reported those claims to the Electoral Commission and the Met Police as “knowingly false”, arguing that they could breach electoral law.

“Under the austerity programme imposed on local government by the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government, Lambeth Council's budget was cut by 50%,” Cllr Adilypour said, when StreathamStuff asked what the claims were based on.

Central government funding to local councils, and councils’ spending power, have certainly been cut significantly in real terms since 2010, when the LibDems went into national government in coalition with the Conservatives. But those cuts were also partly offset by the council’s increased ability to raise funds locally. And cuts to funding are in any case not the same as cuts to the council’s budget.

Lambeth’s central government grant fell by more than 50% between 2010-11 and 2015-16, according to the council’s statements of accounts for those years.

But the fall in its general fund budget over that period was from £310m to £291m, a much smaller outright drop of around 6%, as increases in retained business rates and council taxes made up much of the shortfall. By 2020-21, that core budget stood at just under £307m.

“At a meeting of the London Councils' Transport and Environment Committee, it was the Liberal Democrat representatives at that meeting who called for the Freedom Pass to be reviewed to reduce its costs. Two of those Liberal Democrat representatives are named and quoted in that Evening Standard article,” he said.

The LibDems have said they have never had plans to cut the Freedom Pass – and would have no power to do so in a London Councils body that is currently dominated by Labour.

“No Liberal Democrat has cut Lambeth’s budget by 50%… no Liberal Democrat has tried to cut the Freedom Pass this year nor any other year. Labour knows this, but still promotes false claims to the contrary,” Cllr Harris was quoted by Brixton Buzz as saying.