Bleak prospect for first-time buyers

The St Ives Times & Echo this week prints a report from the Campaign for Affordable Homes Cornwall which predicts worsening conditions for first-time home buyers in St Ives and Cornwall.

The report's authors say there has been a significant loss of homes to both second home and holiday let owners. The Right to Buy scheme has added to the decline in social housing, the report claims.
It says that 19,000 people are on housing waiting lists in Cornwall.
Vicky Garner, for the CAHC, said:
"Councils are unable to house those in even those in priority need."
Th report found that there is a shortage of available affordable land and that many schemes to build affordable housing met with objections at the planning stage.
Other points from the report:

*developers work the system against the provision of affordable homes to maximise profits.
*over the last 10 years house prices in Cornwall have increased by 274 per cent.
*the average house price in the county is £231,000. A new buyer would need to be earning £66,000; the average wage in Cornwall is £19,290
*Cornwall saw a 56 per cent increase in the number of second homes between 2000 and 2006 giving a total of 14,427.
* some parish councils say the official figures underestimate the number of second homes.
* as house prices rise, second home buyers are turning to new builds and non-coastal locations.

Mrs Garner said: "The Campaign for Affordable Homes Cornwall is confident that a bottom up community led approach is what is needed if we are to go any way to solving the current crisis."

Also this week it was separately reported that a plan to build 23 affordable homes at Carbis Bay is being opposed by campaigners who claim the land is needed to improve St Uny School.

And this week Housing Minister Yvette Cooper said that key workers in Cornwall, including nurses, police and teachers, are to be given new support to help them onto the housing ladder.

Cornwall may get 68,000 new houses (7,800 in West Penwith) over the next twenty years, according to proposals published on January 9 in a report by the South West Regional Assembly.