SO the Labour Party pledges to tackle our ever-worsening housing crisis by building 200,000 homes a year by 2020?

On the one hand, it was heartening to hear Ed Miliband spell out what Labour would do to tackle Britain’s shameful housing shortage at this week’s party conference.

But hang on a minute, haven’t we heard all this before from Labour?

In 2007, Gordon Brown made his ‘housing, housing, housing’ speech, promising three million new homes by 2020 and pitching the idea of five new ‘eco’ towns.

So what happened to them?

It’s easy to blame the credit crunch and recession for stymying new building projects. For sure, the first sign of the economy going into freefall was the downing of tools on building sites across the land.

To the outsider, it seemed the totally wrong response. Citizens need homes; people need jobs; the economy needs a boost – let’s keep building.

After all, this is what we did after the war, and it let Britain back to prosperity. From the 1950s to the 1970s, around 300,000 new homes were built every year. This task wasn’t left to the likes of Barratt et al; it was a proper partnership between the public and private sectors.

We need to get back to this model to tackle the scale of the problem we face.

And what a problem.

Housebuilding is at its lowest level since the 1920s. The acute shortage has resulted in inflated house prices and rents.

Ed Miliband reckons it would now take the average family 22 years to save for a deposit on a home compared to three years in 1997.

Private rents have gone up by almost 40 per cent in the past five years and around five million people rely on state aid to remain in their homes.

The Government spends £23.8 billion subsiding landlords through housing benefit last year – 20 times more than it actually spends on housebuilding. Bonkers.

In York, more than 4,500 people are on the council house waiting list. Labour is currently looking for sites to build the 20,000 new homes the city needs for its Local Plan.

Much needs to be done to unravel this mess – and quickly.

Housing policy must not become a political battleground. Politicians will need to show a united front if genuine progress is to be made. The strategy needs to be for the long term, with no recourse to U-turns for short-term politican gain.

A national agenda for housebuilding should be drawn up, which would include:

• Liberalising planning laws to make it easier and quicker to build new homes;

• Countering the culture of Nimbyism;

• Identifying locations for future development, including new towns;

• Building up north – and helping to rebalance our economy by bringing development and jobs beyond Watford Gap;

• Giving local authorities the power to purchase land from developers who are sitting on sites, waiting for prices to rise.

Just last week, the Press revealed plans for 1,300 new homes on the former British Sugar factory site off Boroughbridge Road. This followed news that the stalled Hungate development is being revised, with plans for 195 homes in the city centre being unveiled.

Welcome news indeed, but many more homes are needed if York is to provide a decent place to live for all its citizens.

 

Not wild about animalistic attire

ANIMAL prints are a huge fashion craze for autumn – with everything from leopard dots to snakeskin to zebra print appearing on clothes and accessories.

But not everyone is happy with this new trend.

Bosses at Chessington World of Adventures have banned animal print clothes on the grounds they are upsetting the animals.

Extra staff at the safari park have been brought in to enforce the new dress code – handing out grey boiler suits to anyone in animal attire.

I don't know which is the most offensive: a leopardskin top or a grey boiler suit.

Both are crimes of fashion in my book.