First-time buyer says it is 'almost impossible' to buy a house as PM launches building blueprint

An aspiring first-time buyer says it is an almost "impossible task" for a young person to get on the housing ladder, on the day the government announced reforms to boost housebuilding.

Charlie Nash, 24, lives with his girlfriend and two others in a flat in Chelmsford, Essex, and has been saving up for almost seven years to get on the housing ladder.

He told ITV News Anglia that putting a deposit down was still 18 months away - and only then achievable with his girlfriend.

"I don’t think it would be possible to get on the housing ladder if I didn’t have a partner," he said.

"It’s not something that I would even consider doing by myself, not just for the deposit but also for the mortgage payments too. It feels like it’s an impossible task and I really feel for my friends who are single.

"Even after this whole time it feels like a massive monumental task.

"I don’t feel like it’s been looked at enough by the previous or the current government... I would like Keir Starmer and the current government to build more houses I think that will solve a lot of the problem."

The comments come as Sir Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner visited a building site in Alconbury, Cambridgeshire, to announce reforms to boost housebuilding.

The shake-up will see councils given mandatory targets to deliver a total of 370,000 homes a year in England- up from up from the 220,000 built last year.

Sir Keir Starmer said: “With a generation of young people whose dream of homeownership feels like a distant reality, and record levels of homelessness, there’s no shying away from the housing crisis we have inherited”.

The plans announced on Thursday involve making councils commit to a new housing target in the next 12 weeks, and asking them review their green belt boundaries to meet targets by identifying lower quality “grey belt” land that could be built on.

The updated national planning policy framework will commit to a “brownfield first” strategy, with disused sites that have already been developed in the past prioritised for new building and a default "yes" given to developers wanting to use the land.

"The dream of home ownership will become a reality for many who at the moment that is just snatched away from them," Ms Rayner told ITV News Anglia.

"Grey belt land is disused petrol stations, car parks, scrubland.

"It is not the rolling hills that people have been worried about; we'll make sure that brownfield sites come forward first, that is the plan.

"I'm not concreting over the countryside. Many people will know someone who can't get on the housing ladder, so delivering, in a way that is in consultation with local plans is the way that we can speed up this process."

But shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Kevin Hollinrake said: "What you're seeing with these plans is councillors will not have a say on these large developments in their area.

"People wake up and say to their councillors 'What are you going to do about the huge housing estate that's going in my area?'

"And they can't do anything at all because the government has taken away their right to do so."

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