A Labour MP has accused Hammersmith & Fulham Council of 'social cleansing’ over proposals to demolish council homes and replace them with luxury flats.

Hammersmith MP Andy Slaughter fired a broadside at the Tory-run council over plans to redevelop Watermeadow Court Estate and Edith Summerskill House in Fulham, where 150 council homes will be replaced with 300 new flats. Only 40 per cent will be classed as affordable.

It is a joint venture between the council and Stanhope, the developer behind the transformation of BBC Television Centre in White City.

Mr Slaughter said: “Not only have they (the council) lost the rents from the flats kept empty but 500 families who would have had decent affordable homes will now be forced into the private rented sector, where despite poor standards and overcrowding, rents are up to five times council rents – meaning the taxpayer must subsidise the private landlord through housing benefit. It is a heavy emotional and financial cost to bear to subsidise the council’s wicked social engineering scheme.”

The MP pledged to hold the council to account for what he called a ‘shameful record on housing and social cleansing of the borough’.

Councillor Andrew Johnson, cabinet member for housing at Hammersmith and Fulham Council , called Mr Slaughter’s claims outrageous.

He said: “These two sites were chosen because they were empty. Until we considered the joint venture both sites would have been sold on to the open market to a private developer and the council would have received a lower return and had much less control over the type of housing provided.”

Mr Slaughter also revealed, through a Freedom of Information request to the council, that in the past four years the authority sold 209 empty council homes to the private sector, raising £88.5million, and has no intention of replacing them.

Mr Johnson said the sales paid for maintaining and improving council homes which cannot be covered by rents, helped pay off some of the council’s housing debt and was reinvested in affordable homes for sale at discount market price.

Mr Johnson said: “The council runs an expensive void disposal policy of empty properties through which a limited number of properties are sold. This is good asset management and in line with how other responsible social landlords manage their housing stock.

"If we didn’t sell we would either have to significantly raise council rents or cut millions of pounds of spending on housing stock, which would result in it falling into disrepair.”