New homes figures just don’t add up

I refer to your article last week ‘Yet more houses’, where ‘council chiefs’ have been ‘told by the government that they must build even more houses in the borough’.

Firstly I would question whether such a directive has been given, rather the uplift has been prompted by a document called the ‘Implications of 2014-based Sub-National Population Projections and Household Projections – January 2017’.

This has revised the housing need upwards despite the following issues.

The latest, (2015), lower quartile affordability ratio is now 9.6 times earnings, up from 8.15 in 2013 and getting worse.

Property for those who are starting out is becoming increasingly unaffordable and with financial institutions unlikely to lend at more than say six or seven times earnings, how do young people