Reference the correspondence from Cllr Eades, surely it is the responsibility of the local authority to provide affordable housing for local people, not private developers? Developers already subsidise the council with infrastructure charges on every planning application, some of which have no connection to the proposed development.

Everyone assumes that speculative developing equals easy money and, whilst in good times – even allowing for the extra costs involving bureaucracy – profits can be consistently high, the recessions which occur every decade affect this industry as badly, if not worse than most.

I appreciate they might have had little choice in the matter but if the council had not sold off a large chunk of their housing stock the current waiting list would be greatly reduced.

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