Editor

Gwynedd’s housing chief Cllr Craig ab Iago says 60 per cent of residents can’t afford to buy a home, whereupon the Welsh Government echoes Westminster, and says it will build 20,000 ‘affordable homes’ during its current term. I feel like the little boy who said the king had no clothes, but surely I can’t be the only person to see the glaring contradiction, where one talks of ‘affordable housing’, and the other says a majority can’t afford them.

We have a similar objective to Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’, creating property owning ‘conservatives’, whereas now we are more blatant and only build to sell. As Cameron and Osborne said, “Why build council houses, only to create labour voters!”

Recently I described how the development of the Blaenau Ffestiniog surgery involved six houses for sale, not one being for rent, sold by a housing association. The planning system was intended to be the servant of the people, but has now become the servant of the landowners and the building industry.

Roger Louvet Porthmadog

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