independent Cornish news and comment

BUILDING MORE IS NOT THE ANSWER

Commenting on the Government’s Housing Green Paper, which proposes that planning permission be given for the building of three million new homes in the next 12 years, the MP for the West Cornwall and Isles of Scilly constituency of St Ives, Andrew George, warned that “it would be folly to think that we could build our way out of this crisis.”


The announcement by Housing Minister Yvette Cooper MP also committed the Government to put an extra £3billion into house-building in the next three years.

However Mr George warned that the main factor behind the acute housing crisis in his constituency was lack of affordable housing rather than a simple lack of house building or development land. He will be meeting Ms Cooper later in the summer to discuss his proposed solutions to West Cornwall’s particular problems, including the introduction of new planning controls on second home ownership.

Mr George said: “In the last 40 years the housing stock in Cornwall has more than doubled, in fact it has grown faster than almost anywhere else in the country. And yet the housing problems of local people have got dramatically worse. A survey last year in the constituency showed that, five times as many properties were sold to second home buyers as to first time buyers.

“So simply building houses is not the answer. What we need is to make better use of the scarce land and construction capacity of Cornwall to build for locals; to give non-profit distributing Housing Associations, Trusts and Local Authorities a bigger role and to protect future occupancy to local people.

“The extra money for affordable and homes is welcome, but I will be urging the Government to spend that money in the areas which need it most; and that means West Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.”