The Budget - Missed Opportunities

In early January this year, the community's secretary Sajid Javid was interviewed by Sky News and he said that "ready to go" homes - from factory built to custom-made apartment blocks - will be a key component of his housing white paper to be published this month as he looks for new schemes to hit his eye-watering target.

"These are made-to-measure, ready-made, ready-to-go modern stylish homes and if Germany can do it and other countries can do it I think they can be an important part of what we can deliver in UK," he told Sky News.

But why then is there no mention of them in the White Paper published in February and no mention in this month's Budget?

In fact, the Tories seem to have great aspirations about house building targets but don't have a clue about how to achieve them other than leaving it to "market forces". This is a missed opportunity to start addressing the UK's housing crisis.

Basingstoke Council's development brief for Manydown may have been praised for adding clarity and detail to part of the Local Plan, but it was very vague about the Council's commitment to a target of 40% affordable housing.

Missed opportunity two was the lack of any reference to new building techniques such as modular housing. Liberal Democrats have been pushing for many years for modular housing to be a part of Basingstoke's approach to make new homes affordable for local people.

How do the Basingstoke Tories think they can contribute to the Government's challenging target of building one million new homes by 2020? The experience across Europe is that modular designed houses can be built in much reduced timescales and at lower costs. And developers are now using these techniques in several developments across London and several towns across the UK.

Lib Dem leader on Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council, Gavin James believes that, "We have an ideal opportunity at Manydown to deliver homes more quickly and more cheaply if we take advantage of modern proven techniques. If the Tories are serious about tackling the acute shortage of starter homes and affordable housing, then they need to be proactive and creative. BUT…they seem to prefer to sit back, and give huge subsidies to businesses at Basing View. They put businesses before people."