IT IS a shame neither Mr Laverack nor Mr Cordock read the annex to the City of York Council’s paper on Affordable Housing Viability before they commented.

The paper states that the only sites moving forward are those containing affordable housing.

Affordable housing needs to be built for the many who do not earn a small fortune. More than 51 per cent of first-time buyers receive financial support from relatives; their average age in Yorkshire and Humberside is 36.

Home Builders’ Federation research suggests a third of men and a fifth of women aged 20 to 34 still live with parents; and first-time buyers now need to find an average of £37,000 – a 25 per cent deposit. Add to this high rents in the private sector, and the situation is bleak.

It is a lack of affordable property and mortgages, as part of the economic downturn, and not the council’s affordable housing policy that is affecting the building market. Large developers nationally have no problem with the policy.

Coun Tracey Simpson-Laing, Labour’s spokesperson on health, housing and adult social services, Salisbury Road, York.


• I AM in Australia and all around me houses are going up like crazy. I talk to the builders and tell them that in the UK hardly any house-building is going on.

I tell them one of the main reasons is that British house-builders are forced to give away to social housing organisations a substantial proportion of their product. They refuse to believe me. They say I am a crazy pom who is making up a ridiculous wind-up story.

Sadly, I am not. In Britain, the regulations are now so onerous that the industry has all but collapsed. City of York Council’s latest affordable housing policy is an example. After three years of talking and so-called consultation, it has disregarded reality to produce the contrived result it was determined to achieve all along. This will not work; it will do immense damage.

House-builders are not suddenly going to start building again just because council officers and their consultant Fordham have come up with a spurious document which says it is viable for them to do so. House-builders will make up their own minds and there will be no recovery in York.

Matthew Laverack, Architect of this parish, Normally Lord Mayor’s Walk, York, Currently residing at Warragul, Australia.