One of my election issues is the lack of affordable housing in the constituency; in both the rural and urban areas there is not sufficient housing for people of low wage, or for first time buyers. As the developments are "speculative" I suspect that they will not include genuinely affordable houses. The Green Party wants to increase the quantity of social housing, owned by local councils and not private landlords because everyone has the right to a home, whatever the income or age, young or old. We may have a small number of people in need of social housing, the problem is not as great as in the higher populated and more industrialised part of the constituency. So although the villages need social housing they do not need that many.
The Green Party is committed to local communities making their own decisions and state that they will "Support local aspirations by introducing a community right of appeal against speculative development which conflicts with agreed local or neighbourhood plans". The Green Party Manifesto sets out the details of our housing strategy and it includes:
- Bringing empty houses back into use
- Minimise development on greenfield land
- Reduce VAT on housing repairs and extensions
- Break up the big housing cartels and support small and medium sized builders
And these and other strategies are designed to put off mass speculative housing, allowing communities to choose what and how much development they need.
The full strategy can be found in Chapter 8 of the manifesto:
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