Access to affordable housing is one of the biggest problems faced by the UK, Nick Clegg has said.
Speaking at a question-and-answer session at the offices of news portal MSN, Mr Clegg said affordable housing had become ‘one of the biggest long-term problems that we face as a country’.
Following a report published by the Chartered Institute of Housing this weekend, which said the ‘golden age of homeownership’ was over, Mr Clegg said he found it ‘heartbreaking’ when he saw young families in his constituency who were unable to afford a home of their own.
He told the audience that the government was due to make a number of announcements on homeownership and affordable housing.
‘One of the things that we are doing is dramatically decentralising power, making it easier for local communities to decide for themselves where they want new homes,’ he said. He also attacked the current council housing finance system for preventing councils from building new affordable housing.
Mr Clegg also waded into the row over housing benefit reforms yesterday by saying that expenditure on the UK’s nuclear deterrent would be difficult to justify when welfare payments were being cut.
He said: ‘It is going to be difficult for someone who is going to receive less housing benefit because of the changes we are introducing the understand why at the same time we should spend huge, huge sums of money in a hurry on replacing Trident in full.’
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