Housing benefits are a bandage on a broken leg, let’s build more houses and cut the red tape

It's absolutely nuts how much rents have shot up in Brighton. I know a couple, young professionals, both working hard, and they're paying an absolute fortune just for a tiny flat near Fiveways. It’s not just them, my kids' nursery staff, local shop owners, they all struggle to find anywhere affordable. When the government pumps money into housing benefits, it just chases the problem, pushing rents even higher and creating this endless cycle where landlords are the only ones winning.

We need to stop fiddling around the edges and tackle the real problem: there just aren't enough houses. My proposal is simple: a radical overhaul of our planning system. We should designate huge swathes of land as 'development zones' and completely strip away the ridiculous bureaucracy that currently strangles builders.