THE provision of low cost housing requires input from a number of different areas to achieve the required result.

1 Architects: could design homes which are satisfactory for the purposes intended without frills, which can be improved by the tenant/owner and which can be built at minimum cost.

2 Local authorities: not impose Section 106 payments which ultimately are paid for by the house purchaser.

Services should be improved out of taxation (local or national).

3 Planners: reduce charges for submission of planning applications and reduce the time in determining applications.

Take a sympathetic approach to planning applications for low cost housing.

Presume acceptance unless there are very good reasons for not doing so.

4 Building regulations: Check whether or not any regulations can be dispensed with if they are not really essential.

5 Green lobby: Accept that some housing may have to take place on “green field” sites.

6 Land owners/vendors: Accept a lower return on the sale of land. Developers can also contribute by not paying high prices for land for low cost housing.

7 The government: accept that promoting the building of low cost housing would provide much needed employment in the building industry, as well as solving one of the pressing current social requirements.

A L Dixon, Coggan Way, Bishopthorpe, York

 

TOM Mitchell (Letters, July 13) claims that George Osborne’s budget will benefit working people and families with children.

Well, up to a point. The unexpected living wage announcement is welcome, but the label is a misnomer.

It is really just an overdue rise in the minimum wage, since the amount involved – £7.20 per hour from next April – is far from a real living wage, which is already assessed at £7.85 per hour outside London.

And let’s not forget that young parents under 25 will get no benefit whatsoever from the new policy, so many will remain in poverty.

What’s more, the loss of child tax credits for third and subsequent children is predicted to mean a loss of £60 to £70 per week for many families.

Add in the tightening of the benefit cap, which will mean a loss of £6,000 per year for families where both adults are unemployed, and it’s very hard to see this as a budget that supports families with children.

The Chancellor may have given to families with one hand, but he’s taken away with the other.

In contrast, people in Tom Mitchell’s and my own age bracket continue to be cosseted by the Conservatives.

Sadly the reason is not far to seek: the over-65s are more likely to vote, and more likely to vote Conservative.

A case of looking after your own.

Mark Gladwin, Huntington Road, York

 

SO THE truth behind the hidden untruths in George Osborne’s Budget is out.

The Chancellor has promised that people would be better off due to the national living wage, for people over the age of 25, from April next year.

What he didn’t tell people was that around three million of the poorest households will be £1,000 a year worse off due to his cuts to tax credits.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies had stated that the budget takes “much more” from the poor than the rich and that 13 million households will be around £260 a year worse off due to freezing working age benefits, tax credits and removing the right to housing benefit to the under-21s.

Rumour is already out on the streets that employers will get around paying the new living wage by letting workers go when they reach the age of 25 and then taking on a handful of younger workers.

I suppose this is one way of reducing youth unemployment.

But highly immoral from my point of view.

H F Perry, St James Place, Dringhouses, York