Silence from Rayner as Tameside Housing Crisis Deepens; We Publish Final Open Letter

TAMESIDE, UK – For months, the Tameside Independent has been investigating the severe social housing crisis in Ashton-under-Lyne, a crisis happening on the doorstep of the UK’s Secretary of State for Housing, the Rt Hon Angela Rayner MP. Despite our repeated attempts to get answers for the public, Ms. Rayner and her department have responded with a wall of silence and deliberately misleading data.

This is not an accusation. It is a documented timeline of events:

• June 2025: We sent a formal press enquiry to the government press office detailing the scale of the Tameside housing crisis. It was ignored.
• July 2025: After our first Open Letter gained significant public attention, Ms. Rayner’s department was forced to respond.
• The Flawed Response: The official statement they provided answered none of our specific questions about Tameside. Instead, it cited a waiting list figure of just 1,005 households. This figure, as we have established, refers only to the council’s narrow, internal waiting list. It is a deliberate attempt to downplay the crisis by excluding thousands of other vulnerable families—those who are overcrowded, fleeing domestic violence, or have other urgent needs. The true figure, confirmed on the record to us by major housing provider Jigsaw Homes, is over 7,000 people.
• The Follow-Up: We immediately challenged her department on this 6,000-person discrepancy and gave them a final deadline to respond. They missed that deadline and have been silent ever since.

Ms. Rayner’s department has provided flawed data, and her office has failed to answer direct questions about the 7,000 families waiting for a home in her own constituency. Her personal silence on this matter, in her capacity as our local MP, is a profound failure of representation.

Because the public deserves answers, we have today published our final open letter to Ms. Rayner, demanding she address this crisis. You can read it in full via the link below.

Jason Nield
Editor, Tameside Independent