GOVT RESPONSE PATHETIC AS HOUSING CRISIS DEEPENS

WE have heard of taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut but the Government’s ham-fisted approach to solving Britain’s housing crisis is more like using a feather to crack a rock.

Homelessness and rough sleeping are on the rocketing, housing waiting lists are rising and rent prices are going through the roof, and what does the Government propose as the answer?

While Labour proposes generating £2bn by taxing bank bonuses so we can build 25,000 more affordable homes, fund 100,000 jobs and kick-start our economy, the Tory-led coalition has a far more novel solution.

Let’s build more conservatories.

The Department for Communities and Local Government is currently consulting on plans to make it easier for homes to be improved by easing the planning restrictions so more can be done without planning consent under “permitted development”.

Now I have no particular issue with that proposal per se, but I do feel it rather drastically misses the point.

What we need are real and immediate solutions to reduce waiting lists, ease homelessness and remove the need for rough sleeping. This proposal just tinkers around the edges.

The Government argument is that, by doing this, more families will be encouraged to undertake these builds, triggering work for the building industry. There is some logic in that, but the difference it will make is a drop in the ocean.

Not only that, but it demonstrates how completely out-of-touch this Government is.

The tiny difference this proposal will make to the building industry will not provide roofs over the heads of the people who currently don’t have them – unless those fortunate enough to be able to afford to build a conservatory in the current economic climate plan to use their new extensions to house those in need.

A very noble gesture that would be too, but even in my socialist mind I accept such altruism is rather beyond realistic expectations.

This is a very real problem. In the East Midlands, homelessness went up by 12 per cent in the latest quarter results for 2012, while rough sleeping in the region rose by an incredible 55.4 per cent in the Government’s first year in power.

Homelessness fell by 70 per cent under Labour, from 135,000 in 2003/4 to 40,000 in 2009/10. Two million homes were built by Labour between 1997-2000, while a million more families were able to buy their own homes.

I am not blind to the fact the global economic crisis places Britain in a different position today. But that doesn’t change the fact that we need imaginative solutions resolve this problem.

For example, if the Government agreed to Labour’s proposal to use the cash from the forthcoming 4G network auction to fund a £3-4bn windfall to kick start house building, 40,000 more jobs would be created and 6,500 homes built in the region.

That is the sort of solution we need.

So I have no particular issue with the proposals about conservatories. But I do hope that, once that small matter is resolved, the Government decides to turn its attention to the rather more significant challenges for which it is responsible.

Too many families face an uncertain future this Christmas. But I dearly hope that a great deal fewer families are in this position next year.