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Housing and Regeneration Bill

Many councils around the country have enormous problems with affordable housing, not least when council properties are sold to private speculators who take them out of circulation and then let them to students. The dramatic increase in council house waiting lists has caused two problems. The first is the human misery that I see in my surgery every Friday afternoon, including last Friday. People who are desperate for suitable housing have little hope of being able to move into an old folks' bungalow, which would free up a family council house, or to move into a family house when they are sleeping on sofas, in their in-laws' living rooms or in friends' houses.