YOUR report (December 5) confirms that Malvern Hills is the most unaffordable place for rented accommodation and for purchase of a house in the West Midlands.
Fortis Living (Festival Housing) can confirm that the list of people awaiting affordable housing in the Malvern area is very long.
This represents a good deal of housing poverty and misery for people of all ages, including many children.
And yet your letters pages regularly feature writers who seem to show total disregard for this human misery in the Malvern Hills area.
Surely the only way that housing misery can be solved is by building lots of new houses and to make them affordable.
Unless there are major government (local and national) grants and subsidies, this does mean developers building on a relatively large scale to gain the efficiencies and balancing required so as to include a sizeable number of cheaper houses for purchase or rent.
A major question time public debate for Malvern Hills people to address the local crisis in affordable housing will take place at the Methodist Church, Lansdowne Crescent, Malvern on Saturday evening, March 14, 2015.
The question posed to the platform panel is “ Affordable Housing or Green Fields? ”. The panel will comprise Richard Grounds,Executive Director of Fortis Living(Festival Housing Malvern),Frank Hill ,Chair of the Worcestershire Council for the Preservation of Rural England,and local parliamentary candidates Julian Roskams (Green Party),Richard Chamings (UKIP) and a representative of the Liberal Democrates.The chairperson will be Rev Ian Howarth,Chair of the Birmingham District of the Methodist Church.
The audience will set the panel questions taken by the chair.
Free tickets are now available at website http://housinginmalvern.eventbrite.co.uk .
This event is likely to be very well attended and so I advise readers to download their tickets now.
A short video of the well-attended October foodbank debate when Harriett Baldwin (local Conservative MP) and Daniel Walton (local Labour parliamentary candidate) were on the panel can be viewed at http://cloud.real.com/S/Y3vw3U
Barry Jones
Malvern
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