LIKE most of the rest of Southern England, Bournemouth has always (and still has) a severe shortage of affordable homes for rent.

The demand for council housing, whether from people unable to help us with their mortgages and private rents or completely homeless altogether, is one of the highest, if not the highest in the country per head of working age population.

This cannot be explained away by the level of immigration since there are virtually no immigrants or asylum seekers in accommodation provided by Bournemouth council.

So wouldn’t it be great if the council built a lot more than the paltry 121 units it has planned for the next several years ie virtually none.

The money for this could have been found from the £7.5million surplus the council receives from rents on the relatively small amount of accommodation it currently owns, But this money, under the Blair government, used to go straight to the national exchequer and is now being used by the council to buy its way out of this National Housing Revenue Account, ie pay the current Tory government for something Bournemouth residents already own and have paid for.

G WAY, Cunningham Crescent, Bournemouth