Question 7: What are Conservatives going to do about affordable housing?  My family can’t afford to buy a  property and we are too far down the council list for social housing.

When it comes to the social housing that we have here, I am very much in support of Tenant Management Organisations and against the ALMO, Lambeth Living, set up by Labour Lambeth. If I become your MP, I pledge to work as much as possible to get tenants having control over their housing instead of the diastrous management we’ve had with Lambeth Living.

Home ownership for all is a belief that has always been at the heart of the Conservative party.  We’ve done so much to promote it when we were in government, whether it was with Margaret Thatcher’s revolutionary “right-to-buy” policy or even way back when Harold Macmillan in the early 20^th century built more homes than any other govenrment ever.

I have been personally affected by the housing crisis brought on by Labour. House prices have skyrocketed since they came to power taking home ownership out of the reach of young first-time buyers like myself.  Unable to buy a studio flat anywhere in London even with a decent salary, I now live in a housing association property as part of a shared ownership scheme.

So I know that affordable housing is the key to improving the quality of life for so many people. We want to create a property-owning democracy where everyone has the chance to own their own home. So here’s what we’ll do:

1) permanently raise the stamp duty threshold to £250,000 for first-time buyers, meaning nine out of ten of them will pay no tax on their first home purchase.

2) Communities should benefit when they choose to develop sustainably, so we will match pound-for-pound the council tax receipts that local authorities receive from new homes to encourage sensitive local development. We will create new local housing trusts to allow communities to grant planning permission for new housing within villages and towns.

A Conservative government will make it easier for social tenants to own or part-own their home. We will:
3) introduce a ‘foot on the ladder ’ programme to offer an equity stake to good social tenants, which can be cashed in when they move out of social rented accommodation;

• pilot a new ‘right to move’ scheme and introduce a nationwide social home swap programme, so social tenants can transfer their tenancy to another home or part of the country; and, • respect the tenures and rents of social housing tenants.

We will implement a range of measures to address the problems of the homeless, including introducing more accurate street counts and ensuring a Minister in each relevant department has homelessness in their brief.