Letters
Housing policies 'a dismal failure'
SIR - I have read with interest the recent correspondence in your columns on the subject of affordable housing and provision for key workers.
From this, and from the observation of any interested citizen, it is abundantly clear that the present policies imposed by Government are a dismal failure.
Where there is "affordable" housing, it seems either snapped up by buy-to-let entrepreneurs, or rapidly alienated by housing associations into the common pool.
The sale of so-called brownfield sites for housing and the imposition of quotas of "affordable" housing within an open market development is unsatisfactory, and does not appear to achieve the stated objective.
When such properties are sold on, more often than not, they cease to be "affordable".
"Government" land, such as for example, the police headquarters site, should be designated for "affordable" and key-worker housing only; strict rules as to ownership and occupation should be imposed.
Unless a developer is prepared to make a contribution of this kind to what is, after all, a matter of considerable national importance, he should not be permitted to benefit from development permission on other "brownfield" sites.
In fact such restrictions, in the national interest, would ensure that the reduced cost of land designated in this way would still afford a decent profit to the developer.
Thus there should be an absolute bar to "buy to let" unless the tenant is a key worker and has a long term right of occupation.
The sale of such properties should not be based on a housing list stuffed with people from Reading, Basingstoke, Portsmouth and Southampton, but on a list comprising indigenous citizens of Winchester or people who make some very real, social or economic, contribution to the city.
W.A.C. Halliwell,
St James Villas,
Winchester.
3:10pm Friday 25th April 2008
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