Much wringing of hands by councillors of all parties following the budget. What’s upset them all is what the new governments is doing to housing associations who are now our only provider of local housing that many local families can afford.

Even our local Conservative councillors don’t support forcing housing associations to sell their rented homes through the so-called “right to buy.”  This is because it’s highly unlikely many of them will be replaced.

Now George Osborne has made matters worse by forcing all social landlords to reduce their rents. This might be good news for some of their tenants, but he’s broken a promise made a couple of years ago that their rents should go up by inflation plus 1%. So now they’ll have to build fewer new houses, meaning even fewer new homes for our local families and young people.