‘Council to build 600 new homes’, proclaimed the front page headline in The Press on January 17.

Council leader Ian Gillies declared it to be “the biggest housing delivery programme since the 1970s”.

If that is true, then it is an indictment of successive and present councils’ failure to meet local housing demand.

That demand has not been fuelled by mass immigration into York. The 1,000 or more people currently on the housing list are mostly local people seeking socially affordable properties to rent. That is where the need is most critical.

How does this announcement meet the known need?

Let’s do the sums. 600 houses are to be built over five years: 120 houses a year.

Of these, 20 per cent only will be council houses for rent. That is 24 houses a year.

How many council houses will be sold under the ‘right to buy’? The answer is ‘at least 24 a year and probably more’. So this actually marks a further net decline in socially affordable council properties.

Since 1980, 4,000 council homes have been sold in York; a third of the city’s publicly owned housing stock. More than 1,600 of those are now owned by private landlords.

The 600 houses are to be built on council-owned land. The desperate need in York is affordable properties to rent. That is where the priority should lie. Instead, 60 per cent of the new houses are to be sold at market value.

Is this the ‘Council’s good move on homes’ as The Press editorial proclaims?

Paul Wordsworth,

Burniston Grove, York

Why has housing move taken so long?

WHAT a refreshing headline in your paper of Thursday January 17: ‘Council to build 600 new homes’.

Cllr Ian Gillies, the leader of the Conservatives, is quoted as saying: “This is a positive move by this administration.” So why has it taken so long?

There is nothing in the council’s report that could not have happened four years ago.

During this period of Tory control virtually no affordable homes were built at all. Had they been, homes would have been completed and families housed.

The cynic in me suggests that the realisation that the council elections are only months away is the reason the report has surfaced now.

Bob Towner,

Hobgate, York