Top York Liberal Democrat Andrew Hollyer has called on central government to give local councils more powers and funding to build social housing if they are serious about tackling the housing crisis.

The Haxby and Wiggington city councillor, who is the Liberal Democrat candidate at the next election for York Outer is vice-chairman of the city’s planning committee ‘B’ and a former town planner.

Cllr Hollyer told the Press: “In the more than 20 years I have been involved in planning there has been a 'major' review, invariably promising to 'speed up' the system and 'remove the backlog' once every couple of years or so.

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 "Each one has failed, and in many cases just made the problem worse, because they are based on the belief, reinforced by listening to housing developers more than communities, that the main problem is the planning system itself rather than, for example, land-banking by housing developers mostly interested in keeping their profits high, resulting in over a million houses with planning permission still awaiting construction.

He further explained: “The costs of this failure are all too real, with an ever-increasing number of people locked out of owning their own home, or trapped paying sky-high rents for substandard properties. 

 "If the Government was serious about addressing the lack of supply of housing they would give more powers to local authorities to build social housing, address the concerns of local residents about the lack of essential infrastructure included as part of large housing development proposals and produce serious reforms to prevent land-banking by housing developers.”

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Cllr Hollyer added: “"But once again, whilst a lot of noise is created, the series of minor tinkering around the edges actually proposed will not address the real issues."