Like many people I am sick of hearing that green field and seaside sites are to be ripped up for ‘affordable housing’. Affordable by whom?

Young people leave uni with thousands of pounds of debt repayable as soon as they have a living wage.

Under-24s only receive reduced state benefits if any; pensioners are too old to get a mortgage and many workers have not seen a pay rise in six years.

We need a return to council housing as a lifestyle choice, not as some state handout.

Discounts on the sale of council housing should be a max of 15% and only then if a new council house is built to replace it.

There is empty housing the size of a small city in the UK. So we should bus those on the housing lists to where those places are.

We can introduce a five- year UK residence qualification to the allocation of council housing and scrap the bidding system (return to the points system and waiting lists) so decent housing is available to all, not just those on the streets who become category A.

It would also help if those on the transfer list were able to move to empty council houses and allocate their properties to new tenants. That allows those in Category D and below to improve themselves.

All this done, we need to restrict housing benefit paid to private landlords as their rents are made up of mortgage plus profit.

Most of that rent is paid for by council taxpayers in housing benefit allowing landlords to end up with a property to sell and retire on funded by the state.

RP Lambeth, Martin Road, Hove address