Nick Ferrari Takes Tory Minister To Task Over Previous Housing Proposals

1 November 2019, 08:25 | Updated: 1 November 2019, 14:55

This is the fiery interview between Nick Ferrari and the Communities Secretary after the Conservatives promised more money for local towns - but had they delivered on a similar promise in 2014.

Robert Jenrick appeared on LBC to launch a Town Deals project, where 100 towns across the UK receive additional funding to boost the local economy.

But Nick pointed him towards a 2014 Conservative promise to build a brand new garden city in Tilbury Gardens on the Thames Estuary and asked how that project was going.

That was when things started to get testy.

Nick explained: "Then Chancellor George Osborne talked of 15,000 homes in the first garden city for 100 years in the Thames Estuary in Tilbury. How many have been built?"

Mr Jenrick admitted he didn't have those figures, leading Nick to ask: "Well where is Tilbury Garden City? It doesn't exist!"

When the Secretary of State insisted you don't build a new community overnight, Nick pointed out they have had five years since launching the plan.

Nick told him: "It's all very well for politicians of all political shades to come up with these marvellous ideas. This is a Town Deals initiative which is very exciting.

"So I go back to the recent Conservative initiative of five years ago - nothing's happened with Tilbury Garden City.

"It's very easy to make these promises. It's more difficult to actually build the houses isn't it?

"Where is Tilbury Garden City which was promised by the Conservatives five years ago. Where is it? It doesn't exist."

Admitting he didn't know the answer to that, Mr Jenrick added: "With this proposal , we've already announced the 100 towns. Today, we're actually providing the money to these communities to draw up their plans.

"This is a very real, tangible process."

Watch the fiery interview at the top of the page.

Following the interview, a government source told LBC that the project being referred to was actually Ebbsfleet, where the government had built 1,700 homes.