Thank you for your email regarding affordable housing.
I completely understand concerns regarding the availability of affordable homes, and it is vital that more homes are built which households on lower incomes can afford to live in. That is why recently, planning reforms were introduced to help encourage more affordable housing to be built.
Between 1997 and 2010, house prices across England and Wales skyrocketed from four times to seven times average annual earnings. I recognise that this has priced many people out of the housing market and more needs to be done to provide affordable housing. In 2017-18 alone, 222,000 new homes were delivered. This was the highest level of new homes delivered across England in all but one of the last 31 years. While this is welcome progress more needs to be done, and therefore an extra £2 billion has been allocated for the Affordable Homes Programme, bringing the total funding to over £9 billion. This programme will deliver at least 250,000 more affordable homes by 2022.
I might also add that recent reforms announced to the National Planning Policy Framework, with which local authorities must comply, will set out new planning measures to encourage affordable housing. These include the stipulation that on major housing developments at least 10 per cent of the homes should be available for affordable home ownership.
In our area we have had some successes with new homes being built on derelict sites that have helped regenerate our urban sites as well as providing new homes. The development at Trevu Road by the train station in Camborne and also at Heartlands are good examples of tastefully done regeneration which celebrates the industrial heritage of our area, tidies up derelict sites and provides new homes.
