Montgomeryshire and Glyndwr candidates give their views on housing issues

Candidates looking for your support have been invited to share their views on a range of issues.

As part of our election coverage ahead of the poll on Thursday we asked all candidates a range of questions, with a theme based collection from all candidates below. You can also read individual answers to all the questions here on our Election 24 page, plus links to party manifesto, supplied bios for candidates and links to find out where exactly your polling station is!

Question: What is the top issue you feel the people of Montgomeryshire & Glyndwr will want you to represent them on, and what is your position on it?

There are various solutions that we could offer.
Firstly, the Green Party would address the issue of houses being lost to residents by becoming holiday homes. We would enable local authorities to more easily place a council tax premium on second homes so that many of these would be returned to the residential sector.
There are also many buildings in town centres, such as the upper floors of shops or no long needed office buildings, that could be turned into residential properties. We would encourage and incentivise redundant commercial buildings to be converted into homes.
Again of course housing is a devolved issue so is more under the control of the Welsh government rather than Westminster.

We simply haven’t built enough houses over the last 40 years. Successive Governments both in Cardiff Bay and Westminster haven’t prioritised the needs of young people and their requirement for a stable home to live in. I’ve seen this myself with friends being priced out of the villages and towns they grew up in and have their roots in.
This has only got worse since Liz Truss and the Conservatives crashed the economy and mortgage rates went through the roof, with costs also being passed on to renters.
We need to get building more and we need better regulations on developers to ensure they are building the homes we need, not just executive flats or holiday homes. We also need to ensure that homes are being built in the right place and come with extra amenities such as schools and GP surgeries.
The Liberal Democrats have pledged to build 380,000 homes a year across the UK, including 150,000 social homes a year. We have also pledged to ban no-fault evictions making it easier for young people to feel secure in their renting situation.

Labour has a bold policy to alter planning rules so that we can build 1.5 million new homes. Our stance is that one of the main problems is supply and demand. The population has grown but the housing stock has not kept pace. It is basic economics that in housing shortage prices balloon but when there is a surplus, prices come down. The building of the new homes would also generate a lot of new jobs. We need to end the practice of private house developers sitting on empty sites making paper profits whilst 1 million children go to sleep each night whilst officially homeless!

Wales needs to ensure that the supply of housing matches community needs.
Ensure that empty homes are returned to use
Ensure a modern planning system rather than the outdated current model
Support local authorities and housing associations to build new homes

The primary cause of our housing crisis is uncontrolled immigration – 12 million people have been immigrated to the UK since 1991. All of the parties of government since 1991 are responsible for this – the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. It is simply impossible to out-build this scale of migration, even if sacrificing our farmland and green spaces was considered a price worth paying. We are not the United States, or even France. We are already one of the most densely-populated countries on earth. We must achieve ‘Net Zero’ immigration; only Reform is committed to this.

No response to our Q&A has been received

You can read more Q&A answers here on our Election 24 page along with more election information – remember to GO VOTE ON THURSDAY!

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