REGARDING the comments made by Tony Withers, Guardian, Thursday, December 5, he says that the shortage of council homes came about ‘because of the previous Conservative Government’s policy to sell off council houses leaving little stock for future generations’. This needs to be corrected.

Tom Copley, Labour’s housing spokesman in the capital, said that Margaret Thatcher’s Government had built more council flats and houses in a single year than New Labour managed in its entire period in office. What a damming indictment from Labour.

That is the reason why we have so few council properties available and why the current government is trying to manage very limited stock to the best outcome to help young people with children living in over-crowded properties when there are those who live in properties with rooms to spare.

Official data shows that the Blair/Brown governments built 7,870 council houses over the course of their 13 years (if we don’t include 2010 – the year Cameron became PM – this number drops to just 6,510).

Mr Copley contrasted this figure with the record of Mrs Thatcher's government, which never built fewer than 17,710 council houses in a year. In other words, under Thatcher’s government, nearly 30 times as many council houses were built every year than under 13 years of Labour. Put another way, between 1997 and 2010, of the 2.61 million homes built, only 0.3 per cent were local authority tenure. Mrs Thatcher’s government built a similar number (2.63 million), but 18.9 per cent were ‘local authority or council’ properties.

Look at it another way, New Labour built a pitiful average of 562 council houses per year and Mrs Thatcher’s Conservatives? ... 17,710, a colossal 30 times more each year.

A Edwards Fearnhead