The UK has been suffering from a severe housing shortage for well over a decade. Many see our housing crisis as being primarily in large metropolitan areas, but we in the countryside are also struggling to meet current housing demand.
Young people are looking to purchase affordable first homes, people are looking to upsize or downsize and Powys is becoming a popular place for people to retire to. As a modern, ethical society we have the responsibility to react to these challenges and create a mixed, diverse, rural housing market to meet the needs for all.
In Brecon and Radnorshire we have a situation where many people want less house building to preserve the look of their local town or village, and I sympathise with that. We also have the challenge of creating new housing for our aspirational and talented youngsters who wish the get on the housing market. Many young people want to live in and around the countryside, but there just aren’t any good quality, affordable housing for them to be able to stay in their communities. We should not ask our young people to re-locate when their parents had the ability to happily settle in these rural communities. We must strike the right balance between maintaining the tranquillity of our beautiful constituency whilst meeting housing demand so future generations can live in this area.
We must create a mixed housing stock here in Brecon and Radnorshire, comprising of terrace housing, small apartment blocks and detached housing. At present the new build housing stock mainly comprises of semi-detached and detached housing. We need to start to build good quality varied housing to ensure we meet current demand going forward. We should ensure that we get most housing on the land available whilst maintaining good quality spacious new builds.
I will be working in Parliament over this term to ensure that the Government commits sufficient funding to build new homes in rural areas. I will meet with local building firms in Brecon and Radnorshire to see what they believe needs to be done to ensure we meet growing housing demand and work with Councillors across Powys to ensure the right strategy is put in place so that Powys owned land can be used for affordable housing. Both the private sector and Government must take action to resolve this housing crisis, because if we don’t resolve it soon then generations to come will suffer and be kept off the housing ladder for good. More stories