Kingsbridge

Totnes MP Anthony Steen talks about the affordable housing crisis facing the South Hams.

"The Dartmouth Chronicle and South Hams Gazette front page headline (19 October) was: - "We have to build housing". Too true! Currently 200,000 new homes are needed annually but according to the Home Builders Federation (Times, 22 June 2007) we are 60,000 homes short each year. This is further compounded by Britain's attraction of economic migrants not only from Europe but from beyond, all of whom have to live somewhere.

The affordable housing crisis is no nearer a solution. The Government's announcement a fortnight ago that a sizeable sum of additional public money would build 100 more affordable homes a year in each local authority areas in the Westcountry until 2011 was particularly welcome. But it won't solve the problem especially as first-time buyers have nowhere to live now and the average house price in England continues to rocket upwards.

Why is this crisis getting worse? The principle reason is one of scarcity because: (1) people live longer so fewer homes come on the market; (2) divorce rates are up and more housing is needed as a result; (3) young people move away from their family home for work or college and need somewhere to live. Demand therefore continues to outstrip supply and it seems to be getting worse.

High land prices and the absence of sufficient public subsidy has resulted in the South Hams building just 133 affordable houses in 2005/6 and only 59 in 2004/5. Yet, according to figures supplied by 16 housing authorities in Devon and Cornwall almost 55,000 people are currently registered as needing a home. Waiting lists have doubled in the last two years. The situation is chronic.

Some argue that if second homes were banned it will solve the problem especially as one in every 27 houses appears to be a holiday home. Yet if all second homes were released onto the open market tomorrow, first time buyers would still not buy them simply because of their inflated price tag.

The Liberal Democrats' campaign for second home owners to pay full council tax misled the public into believing the additional money raised would build more affordable homes. It hasn't; and of the £2 million additional revenue the Devon County Council has received from second homes tax in the South Hams just 10 per cent has built affordable houses in the South Hams. The Council received from the County Council just £213,000 in 2005/6 and £222,000 in 2006/7. Just sufficient to build one or at the most two additional affordable homes a year!

The Government believed they might make a serious inroad into tackling the problem by persuading private developers to earmark 25 per cent of homes in all new developments as affordable. That idea met with limited success because the only way a developer could finance a percentage of their development to build affordable homes was to inflate the price tag of the other houses sold on the open market.

Another view was that the building at Sherford, a new town on the outskirts of Plymouth, would help alleviate the affordable housing problem since half of the 4,000 new homes are to be affordable. Yet the snag is the earliest date for completion is 2016 and 80 per cent of these homes will be exclusively for Plymouth residents, not for those registered in the South Hams!

I remain convinced that the only solution to the housing crisis must be to identify land which is unused or underutilised and combined with a more liberalised planning regime making it possible for thousands of new homes to be built. This doesn't mean building them in the North of Scotland or in parts of England where there is no work. They have to be located where there are jobs and employers want to do business. Public funds are needed to provide the necessary infrastructure enabling private developments to go ahead rather than subsidising housing through the public purse. I argued this in 2000 while debating in the Commons the Urban Regeneration and Countryside Protection Bill. My view is that public infrastructure and building social housing is the role of Government. But the Government talked out the Bill out saying it wasn’t needed. It was. It still is. This would have had particular relevance for Kingsbridge and Dartmouth where further new homes are planned but where the existing infrastructure is bursting at the seams from ever growing numbers of people and cars.

I believe the inability of families nowadays to raise happy, secure, and fulfilled children in their own homes with their own gardens is a major factor behind social breakdown and dysfunctional society in which we live. Let there be no mistake, we are well past the point of platitudes and party political campaigns. New house build is now the most pressing local priority and anyone who says otherwise is not facing up to the reality, and like Nero simply fiddling whilst Rome burns."