These homes won’t help first time buyers

✒ LIZ Truss, the Chief Treasury Secretary, says that the choice is between building 500,000 new homes on greenbelt land or seeing Jeremy Corbyn in power.

Utter tosh – the real choice is between building luxury homes in the greenbelt or affordable homes on brownfield sites.

The CPRE has identified enough brownfield sites to build 720,000 affordable new homes.

Then there are the 400,000 homes for which planning permission has already been granted, but not a brick has been laid as some developers seek to bump up the price.

Traditional Conservative voters will never forgive this Government if, despite pledges to the contrary, it bulldozes over the English countryside.

The countryside is not the Government’s to squander.

It should be held in trust for our grandchildren and our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Besides supplying the food chain, the countryside gives a sense of well-being.

Yes, housing developers prefer green fields. Of course they do. It’s virgin soil, easy to build on and sited in areas that command a high price. This in no way helps the first-time buyer. Developers should be given a tax break to facilitate brownfield development of housing. Also the default planning reponse should be not building on green fields unless there are no viable brownfield sites within a radius of, say, three miles. By pandering to developers, Liz Truss will not only alienate traditional Conservative voters, but will betray first-time buyers.

No votes there! Michael Newman Bishop’s Cleeve