A community-led approach could help to deliver the right housing, in the right places, for the right people.

One of my election pledges was to Tackle the Cornish Housing Crisis – a solid choice, given that every day constituents write to me sharing harrowing stories about totally inadequate accommodation – with insufficient rooms, problems like mould and breakages, and people even having to find caravans to get a roof over their heads – meaning I often have to step in to help fund support.

But there’s a paradox, because in parallel, I hear also a lot of concern over how many homes we’re building.

I’ve always been upfront with constituents about what must be done to fix our housing crisis – so, in that vein, while I am confident we will build the numbers within this constituency, I am also mindful that we need to actually build the right homes. That has to be our mission, because we know, from building as many homes as we have done in Cornwall, many go to either slightly older families – and often retirees, sometimes. This demographic, whilst very welcome addition to our community life, brings a demand for more workers in our public services and workers in our schools, including where people have families that they are coming here with.

But we’re sadly not meeting our demand for young people leaving home for the first time – youngers workers – and actually, by and large, the lower-paid people who are the backbone of our economy and public services in Cornwall.

We’ve got to look after these people, and tackle this local demand too. I’m hopeful that cooperative models like Community Land Trusts – which we’re already good at here in Cornwall – can play a role in that. But, on the wider point - around the ‘fear factor’ of what are we building and where, I would just say, worry not! We are fortunate enough to know where our constituency’s share of Cornwall’s 4,000-strong housing target per year are going every year. In St Austell, including at Carclaze, we have got 4,100 spread over the current Local Plan period from 2016 to 2030. Many of these sites will be familiar to people already and much of that development pipeline is already under construction.

In recent years, actually getting things built has often been easier said than done. We’ve got to remove some of the barriers to that, and to making those homes affordable, and ensuring they’re the right kind of homes for the people that we need most to serve, and that we’re getting the right infrastructure in place. But, it’s really important that we do know where that housing is going and we do find ways to fill that demand with the right types of homes in the first place. My forthcoming report, written together in conjunction with the Community Land Trust Network provides real insight into that.