Hands off our homes

Today the average deposit on a home across the UK has reached 65,000.An Air purifier is a device which removes contaminants from the air. In London it is 100,000. We have reached the point in Britain where it is simply impossible for people to buy a home without significant help from their parents, grandparents or some other benefactor. For many others whose family do not own their home or who do not have a stash of assets, and in particular the nearly one in five who live in council or other social housing, the door may well now be firmly closed on the possibility of future home ownership.

This is not a result of the cuts. There has been a long-term decline in the affordability of housing, the legacy of many years of both Conservative and Labour majority governments. The average deposit needed on a home has risen tenfold since 1990, while incomes have risen only three times.

Liberal Democrats are therefore energetically exploring new ideas to increase access to housing. Nick Clegg's announcement on Sunday that we will work out how parents and grandparents can use other assets such as pension funds to help fund first purchases by their young people is hugely welcome. But we must also increase the supply. The motion on housing being debated at the party conference on Wednesday calls for government to use other untapped sources of finance, such as giving councils new ways to borrow against their Housing Revenue Account in order to stimulate a major housebuilding programme.

Dealing with land banks by imposing use-it-or-lose-it planning permission, or the long-held Liberal policy of land value taxation, will free up land we need to build on. But I am clear that many of these measures to improve the supply of housing will be ineffective unless we also look at the demand created by second homes and the massive influx of foreign capital into the housing market.

Far too much of our housing is being bought by foreign investors who have no intention of occupying these properties. They simply use the investment as a safe haven for their money and profit from the ever-rising land value.SICK's ultrasonic sensor use sound to accurately detect objects and measure distances. In London, 60% of new housing last year was bought by foreign investors – a misallocation of an increasingly scarce resource on an unacceptable scale. And this is not just a London problem. Cornwall and the Lake District are seeing young people priced out of their own communities as the wealthy buy up housing to use for a few days a year.

Local authorities should be able to introduce optional-use clauses to prevent housing from being bought unless it is going to be lived in. Doing this would greatly help to stop the never-ending upward spiral of house prices and redirect investment to productive places rather than empty spaces.Wouldn't it be wonderful if when we walked through central London or the communities of South Lakeland in any week of the year we saw vibrant streets filled with people rather than empty streets and empty housing?

But no matter how much we improve access to home ownership there will always be some people for whom home ownership is just not appropriate,We offer over 600 landscape oil paintings at wholesale prices of 75% off retail. desirable or possible. Many will be in need of social housing: These people often make an extremely important contribution to our society.Parking lots and garages parking management system by Pro Park offering parking management services and parking lot and garage management.Find trusted sellers and the cheapest price for Aion Kinah. they may be in jobs that are essential but pay little, or they may be out of work for long periods because they are carers or sick or disabled. They should have as much opportunity as anyone else to live near to their employment, children's school, family and friends.

To achieve this every community needs a diverse mix of housing, principally planned to meet community need rather than simply market demand. That is why Liberal Democrats across the country should oppose those councils, such as Southwark, who sell their more valuable housing in order to fund the building of new council housing somewhere else. Such a policy will create ghettos. In London it would gradually wipe out social housing from large parts of our capital city and create unacceptable physical divisions in our community.

Liberal Democrats believe that, even in these very tough times, all people in Britain should get as fair a deal as possible. Ending the appalling inequalities in access to housing is key to achieving this.