The article states: “The money will also be used to draw up a fairer policy for all, so everyone receives the same level of service.”

Who exactly is currently receiving a lesser service then? Who is being hit by the current unfair policy?

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no no no we want less houses in shropshire

its overcrowded full of second homes and commuters we want to protect the countryside not concrete over it all and turn into telford

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Dear Mrs. Williams and Tory Boy,

I find your attitudes completely unfair – I am 30 years old, have worked full time since 16 years old, am an accountant earning a good salary and still, because of the prices on even the most basic property in the housing market, at 5 times my salary I still couldn’t purchase anything better than a 1 bedroomed flat over a crack house. I am single and have no children through no fault of my own (I believe in a partnership for the forseeable future if not life). Are you trying to say I have no right to be trying to secure my own future without the assistance of any other party? Do not assume that affordable housing will only be taken advantage of by out of work layabouts. I work very hard and it is the fault of the British econcomy that I cannot afford to purchase my own home. Why should I have to get shacked up with a man just to be able to make this one basic lifetime decision? I should be able to purchase on my own merits of securing a good job and being financially viable, not because it requires a minimum of 2 salaries to purchase a property. Unfortunately I have very little income to spare toward saving a deposit as I have been paying my own rent and bills since I was 18 years old. So what’s your explanation for my conforming to these so called ‘Tory Values’ you think are so important and yet still not being able to get onto the housing ladder?

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Mrs Williams, there might be some merit in your statement about ‘saving to get onto the property ladder’ but you seem to have a very short memory…

The great heroine of many Conservatives Margaret Thatcher, masterminded the sale of most of Britain’s council housing stock to the then tenants in the ’80s, but prevented almost all of the capital raised from being spent on replacement publicly-owned housing, (preferring instead to spend it upon massive unemployment) thus forcing many who might have previously rented whilst saving up a decent deposit for a private purchase into the housing market using mortgages of 100% or even more, which her friends, the ‘saviours of our economy’ in the financial services sector were only too happy to provide, funded by dodgy, over-sold endowment policies. So much for Tory financial regulation!

Meanwhile, her henchman Tebbitt was encouraging people to ‘get on their bikes and find work’, thus undermining the prospects for young people who might have wished to stay close to their places of birth and perhaps even, as suggested, live with their parents whilst saving.

We’ve all seen where this wonderful prudent Conservatism, and leaving it all to ‘the market’ led us – the buy to let boom (and bust!) ridiculously inflated house prices, a massive shortage of decent publicly-owned rented housing stock, and ultimately to the recent failure of the banking sector, and market capitalism as a whole!

Do some of you never learn the lessons of history?

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sueellan@5 > I think you’re being a bit naive in your reply.

Correct, there’s no reason why you should rely on a man.

And you certainly seem to have been working hard to get on in life.

But that’s your mistake. British society is more disparate now. The only people who can afford housing from scratch are people on benefits or high-earners.

You state that on your salary, you couldn’t afford more than a 1 bedroom flat (over a crack house – please let police know where, they’d be very interested).

Well, what exactly do you think is meant by “affordable housing”?

Do you think that all those nice building developers are going to ensure that there’s a sudden sprouting up of 5 bedroom houses with large gardens, ensuite facilities, close to work, fluffy puppy dog thrown in free, etc, all for a price that you can afford?

At 3x average accountant’s salary, £81.000 for a detached 3 bed villa in the Ironstone development (of 3000 planned units) maybe? Or at 2x average salary, a penthouse flat in the Millennium Village at £54.000? Or at 1x average, a £27.000 bungalow in Shrewsbury?

Affordable means “as many high-end, executive houses as we can get away with whilst building some cheap, small and badly designed blocks for people chosen by housing associations to inhabit them”

Affordable means “at a price you can afford”.

And for your category of person, (from how you describe yourself), it also means “one bedroom flat” at 4x average accountant salary, (if you’re lucky), because you have a job, are single and want to own your own property, therefore you’re not really of interest to the housing associations, (whose target market, on the whole, *IS* prioritised towards out of work layabouts who’ve had the sense to have as many babies as possible to move up the list or people who’ve realised that saving and paying into a pension is for the accountants of this World), and you’ll have to rely on the private market – who are not there to make a loss just because you want a house at a less than “affordable price”.

You shouldn’t be misled by these announcements of “affordable housing” as you’ll end up disappointed – it’s lots of council houses interspersed among lots of homes for high-earners.

(PS: Councils and Housing Associations have a lot to answer for. In Sutton hill, Telford, I see 3 bedroom houses that have offers on them for £60.000. THAT should be affordable for you, and the houses themselves are not too bad. BUT, who’d buy there privately, apart from a landlord looking to stick DSS tenants into the house and rake it in? Government largesse with the benefits system, Council apathy and HA policy of not getting rid of rogue tenants have ensured that the area is not really an attractive place to be. [Yes, folks, I know that there's a great spirit there and some places are super, but ....].

However, it’s certainly “affordable”.)

land of caynham@8: “Starter homes” of today, slums and no-go estates of tomorrow.

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the only people who get houses these days are those on benefits

what about the hard working majority?

as a white male with a degree i get nothing out of society and yet i put the most in, in terms of taxes, hours, parenting, volunteering etc, its just not fair

only the elite rich and the really poor have done well out of Bliar and clowns socialism

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