Minister Yvette Cooper has set out reforms to the planning system to help local authorities deliver more and better homes - including more affordable, family homes.

The government clearly wants and needs to build more homes - and fast.

Their own research has found that if we do not do so, then the proportion of thirty-year-old couples able to afford their own home will fall from over 50 per cent today to nearer 30 per cent in twenty years' time.

You can get a sense of the housing need from the fact that over the last 30 years of the twentieth century, the number of households increased by 30 per cent, while house building fell by 50 per cent.

The new policy contained in a statement called Planning Policy Statement 3: Housing (PPS3), is meant to overcome the obstacles that clearly exist in the planning system as it currently exists, which mean there are not enough good sites coming through that can give the UK the family homes that are clearly needed.