Another homes plan comes crashing down

During the General Election, politicians once again pledged to build fantastical numbers of much needed dwellings and in ever optimistic time scales. Yet given that we have a hung Parliament, little is likely to happen quickly, especially since the Housing Minister, Gavin Barwell, lost his seat.

But when the dust has settled, the UK will still need approximately 240,000 new homes built each year, and ways to do this would be to identify Green Belt land that can be built on, have a Secretary of State for Housing, not just a Housing Minister, set a minimum percentage of public sector-owned available land to be built on each year, and form a construction company that is run as a private-sector housebuilder but owned by the public, with a mandate to find sites and build. Otherwise future generations will merely be able to read about home ownership in history books rather than ever be able to afford it. Russell Quirk, Founder, eMoov.co.uk