Brown's Housing Promise Too Little Too Late

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 12th Jul 2007

Speaking at the Defend Council Housing Conference at the TUC Congress House today, Liberal Democrat Housing Spokesman Paul Holmes MP said:

"The Prime Minister's announcement is both too little and ten years too late. As Chancellor he has created a housing crisis of shocking proportions. Since 1997 council housing waiting lists have soared with an extra 600,000 households waiting for a home. First time buyers now use more of their income buying a home than at any time from 1992.

"All of the extra housing the government has announced must be social or affordable housing. Last year 25,000 social homes were built in the UK compared with a need identified in the Barker review to build at least 56,000 new social homes a year if waiting lists are to be cut.

"One very simple way to start to tackle this crisis is to allow councils to build council housing again; something the Labour party conference votes for every year and which Gordon Brown has in turn rejected every year.

"We also need to deliver more affordable housing. The government should be handing over the 550 sites currently owned by government departments to community land trusts. That would ensure the tens of thousands homes built on them would remain affordable into the future. Government schemes currently only guarantee their affordable homes are affordable the first time they are sold."