Government should intervene in private housing, spokesperson claims

The government should force private house builders into finishing their projects and transform them into social housing, it has been claimed.

A spokesperson for the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (Ucatt) has said that this will tackle the problem of growing homelessness and inadequate housing.

"As soon as you start taking people off the waiting list and you move in social housing, you take the pressure off the housing industry. You also restart the house building sector," the spokesperson said.

According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors' construction market survey, Gordon Brown's regime needs to build more than 200,000 new homes each year if it is to have any hope of reaching their target of two million new homes by 2016.

However, it was claimed that only 66,220 new homes have been built so far this year.

Potential home buyers planning to purchase a new property could consider the self build option due to the perceived lack of new developments and group's such as Ucatt pushing for private builders to turn their developments into social housing.