There are two housing crises in this county. One is the sheer number that John Prescott wishes to have built in Sussex. The second is their soaring cost.

Plenty of attention has been given to the expansion of housing because it is mainly the well-heeled people in country towns and villages who will be affected by it. Less has been given to the cost because this mainly affects the poor, whose voices are not so loud.

If house prices soar, the implications are usually neutral to those owning their homes. But those who do not own them can only watch them fly away from their reach. Landlords are also tending to sell rather than rent, which is leading to many people losing their homes.

There is another problem for young single people in that housing benefit for them does not generally match the rents which are being charged. The choice is stark. Move into a slum or become homeless.

Up to 20 years ago there was always a reasonable supply of rented housing supplied by councils. But this was eroded considerably under the last Government, which instituted the popular right-to-buy programme and stopped local authorities building any more.

The result of all this has been that many of the best council homes have been sold to tenants, often at enormous discounts, while new homes are being built at a lower and slower rate by a multitude of housing associations.

Brighton and Hove Council, which has the worst housing problem in the South East, is already trying to get about a third of the homes as social housing in larger developments of over 25 homes. This has worked well but still the shortage grows.

Now the authority is suggesting that the proportion should be 40 per cent and that it should apply to all but the smallest schemes. This is likely to be blocked by the Government but I cannot see why. The need for social housing must be obvious to anyone who has ever scanned the advertisements of properties to rent in this newspaper or seen the numbers of people sleeping in doorways or on the beach.

Homelessness is growing almost out of control in the towns. The council is struggling to find temporary, let alone permanent, housing for them all. And as the numbers grow, so does the pressure on people who have hung around patiently, often for years, on the waiting list.

Stipulating that a large proportion of new homes must be social housing ensures a steady stream of supply in towns where sites are in short supply and prices are rising faster than almost anywhere else in the country.

It also, incidentally, ensures a better mix of housing rather than having all the posh people in one part of town and the poorest on isolated estates. Not only should the Government applaud this new venture by Brighton and Hove Council, it should also extend it to all the other councils in Sussex.

I would personally go far further than that by ensuring that all greenfield developments anywhere in the country were for social housing only.

We must stop Sussex from being covered by concrete, bricks and mortar over the next few years. We must ensure that most sites which are used are those already within existing towns. And we must make sure that ordinary people can afford to buy or rent many of the homes which are being built.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.