Housing in Harrogate and Knaresborough

Campaigning in Parliament:

Prime Ministers Questions - Housing in Harrogate and Knaresborough - 13th December 2006

Parliamentary Questions to the Minister

Liberal Democrat Plans:

In June 2007, the Liberal Democrats announced plans for building one million new socially rented affordable and low cost homes by 2020 helping to tackle the severe shortage of affordable and social housing. 

This will help the residents of Harrogate and Knaresborough enormously:

There are a million and a half families on council waiting lists nationally with 3,200 in the Harrogate District alone, yet fewer and fewer social rented homes are being built. The number nationally has halved since Labour came to power.

Meanwhile houses to buy are getting ever less affordable. House prices here in Harrogate have grown by 6.79% in 2006 while earnings decreased by 2.4%. An average house now costs over 10 times the average earnings in our area. There's no way most young people, even many young couples, can afford that. Many local young people are being left stranded, unable to afford to get even a foot on the housing ladder as prices soar further and further out of their reach.

These new proposals from the Liberal Democrats respond to both these problems. They would deliver the UK's most ambitious home-building programme in over a quarter of a century. 100,000 new social, low cost and affordable houses every year for 10 years to benefit those in housing need.

This is the housing revolution that people in Harrogate and Knaresborough desperately need.

Liberal Democrat proposals include:

* Building 100,000 new affordable, social and low cost homes each year

* Devolving and reforming the planning system to make decisions faster and more effective for all parties

* Introducing equity mortgages to ensure that affordable housing is built and maintained for the benefit of buyers

* Building smaller social housing developments which are integrated with private housing

* Cutting VAT on housing renovations and repairs

Updates - September 2007

Local Authority bribes won't solve housing crisis

Responding to the Government's announcement of a £500 million incentive for councils to build more homes, Phil Willis MP:

"Yet more bribery and micromanagement of local authorities won't solve the housing crisis.

"The Government has taken the same approach over the last decade, leaving us in the mess we're in now. 

"Whitehall targets have stopped those areas that want to build more houses, and forced others to build on greenfield sites they would rather protect.

"We need a new system which gives councils the funding and freedom to provide affordable homes according to local needs not central diktat. 

"If the Government was serious about providing genuinely affordable housing, they would hand over brownfield sites on public land to community land trusts and invest more money in promoting equity mortgage schemes. These measures would provide homes people could afford, and which would remain affordable in the long term."