to think its a disgrace that Cameron is going to stop lifetime council tenancies

[sparklesandglitterxx]

and think that that is NOT the solution to the housing crisis?

the solution as far as i can see it is, lots and lots more council houses need to be built, regulation in private renting needs to be improved, and GENUINELY affordable houses to buy for those on low wages that wish to or are able to buy

fed up of seeing the great things about Britain being chipped away. Why punish renters? The whole Tory attitude towards council housing being a last resort for the destitute disgusts me. council housing needs to be brought back to what it was originally meant for...which is a decent secure home for anyone who wants one. i live on a council estate which is a mix of council, HA and bought. People stay here, they build lives here, generally it is a lovely community. i have never been happier or more settled anywhere i have lived, I have done well in my life and been able to have a big family. my children are happy and thriving at school and have lots of friends. My point is if these changes go through, they will end up DESTROYING communities like ours and so many others. The Tories just seem to want everyone either paying their landlord mates every penny they earn or pushing up house prices by buying. But not everyone wants to buy, and more importantly not everyone CAN buy, (I have friends on good money who are still priced out the market) and hardly anyone would actually CHOOSE to be in insecure, expensive private rented !! I also think that if more people are in secure housing, it will help peoples mental health (hence cutting costs in mental health services), it will improve childrens chances in life, as they wont have to keep moving schools and away from friends etc, it will encourage people to better themselves, it will cut the HB bill, and also with people spending less on their rent they will have more to spend in the economy, thus boosting it!

I also suspect it wont end here....while it will be for new tenants only to start with, i would imagine it will end up being everyone in council / HA

We will find out whose idea it was when they become a Dame or get a knighthood.

Subsidised housing should be built on brownfield sites, IMO.

Yes, let's just build all over England's beautiful countryside.

and there you have it. that's why we are in this mess. But it's not just building on green space. Unused buildings need to have their protections removed so they can be replaced.

10% of england is built on. we have a long way to go before we have concreted over the entire country.

I'm sure there's a far better way of building more housing than paving over the countryside, like relaxing planning on brown-sites as you suggest.

Fill up the empty houses first. Then build more if necessary (it probably will be). Not long ago, there were considered to be something like half a million empty homes in London. Just London.

Filling up the empty homes is not going to touch the sides, building on brown field sites is another misnomer, to really address the situation needs mass house building and that means re-assessing green field sites and tackling nimbyism head on, we are in a situation where we essentially close the borders and build more houses than any government is willing to justify to cope with natural population growth, or we accept that we have to sacrifice land and build satallite towns and as such reduce house prices.

Either situation is the reason why any government isn't going to tackle this head on, the electorate (of any stripe) isn't willing to take this on and prefer short term solutions.

London is not as empty as it was. We did have a reducing population in London but not now. In fact in some areas you have some people wanting to keep commercial buildings - the heart of cities, business etc and others wanting to convert every old terraced house in the centre of London back into homes. It is a difficult balance to get right. Building up and high like the Barbican in its day is part of the answer and how many cities abroad have coped.

Building in the countryside is not the answer as no one wants to live there as there are no jobs. I bet those poor Syrian refugees living on the Isle of Bute in Scotland where there is a huge shortage of children in schools, declining population and massive need for young blood as there often has been in all those parts of Scotland are not that delighted to be in an area with no work even if they were allowed to work.

Yes Deo, totally agree it's more complicated than just building houses. Where I live housing costs are lower because there are fewer jobs (especially professional jobs) and it's therefore seen as less desirable than city living. We moved away from the SE partly for this reason. We have a very high quality of life where we live partly because of lower housing costs but it's naïve for people to say 'build all over green field sites'.

What we need is an economic strategy that stops treating London as a bankers' playground and the rest of the country as a kind of serf population subsisting on zero hour contracts. There is lots of housing stock lying empty in the north but until there are jobs to match those houses will continue to fall into disrepair.

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/04/end-of-council-housing-bill-secure-tenancies-pay-to-stay?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

There is lots of housing stock lying empty in the north but until there are jobs to match those houses will continue to fall into disrepair.

lots of countries have regional variability in housing stock. But the fact that there are empty houses in the north is less than useless.

Yes, one strategy would be to tilt the economics away from London. That is, in some senses, difficult to do, but not impossible. However, what should be relatively easy to do is build more housing. It's only 20 years of incompetent governments that have allowed this to happen. Before that, Britain could and did build houses. The green belt is one spot, but so our brownfields. It would also help if people didn't need endless planning to change windows and make additions to a house.

But it's not just that London is a bankers paradise. Low interest rates, poor economic activity and constrained building make London property a great investment for everyone in the world.