Thanet District Council's (TDC) housing provision is no-where near good enough according to recent reports.

TDC Ranked 65th out of a total of 67 (second from bottom) for all councils in this area when it comes to providing affordable housing according to the Shelter Housing League Table.

The 2009 requirement for affordable housing was 1,544 homes but Thanet District Council planned to provide just 70 homes and managed of that only 63. Using a fairly standard 10% confidence interval we can authoritatively say that TDC made no actual difference having failed to significantly act on the need.

With 4,697 households on the waiting list and with Thanet District Council's 2008 to 2009 figures for lettings showing that they housed just 501 it will take until 2019 to house the remaining waiting list assuming that no one is added to the waiting list before then.Shelter said it would take more than nine years to clear the number of Thanet households on council and housing association waiting lists, if the rate of lettings continued at its current pace. according to kentonline.co.uk who have also covered this story.

However with 96 household accepted as homeless and 25 in temporary accommodation for the 2009 period that's an extra 121 households that need somewhere to leave and are unable by their own means to obtain this. At the most recent rate of increase TDC will not have cleared the waiting list by 2022.

You might think that this is bad beyond all reason but TDC is not alone in totally failing to provide. Only 8 out of 323 local authorities provided for the area's need last year. While 70 local authorities (Thanet included) failed to even cover 10% of the need.

Thanet's Hard House Facts

In order to afford to by an average-priced house in Thanet you would have to earn at least £34,244. This is because you would be looking for a mortgage for around £150,000 yet the average person in Thanet earns £15,000. Even a working couple both bringing in an average wage could not between them reach the required minimum amount needed to buy an average priced home.

Prices would have to drop to £52,500 before the average wage earned in Thanet could afford to buy a home. We all know this is never going to happen but any company willing to cater to this niche that is able to produce and sell new homes at around this price mark could easily sell the homes as fast as they make them. Sadly this is not going to happen as the value per square foot of land would be far lower at this price point and the total profit fort he build would be less than the total potential profit (if more expensive houses were built).

This is why local authorities (elected and paid for by us) are duty bound to fill this need where people and not profits come first. Somehow in Thanet our council has become more focused on grand (and in my opinion wishful-thinking driven) plans for cheap warehouses, ransom strips and property sell offs rather than focusing on the reasons TDC exists - to solve local problems for local people.

The only other way that TDC could solve this housing issue is to raise the amount and quality of available work to the point that over the next three years the average wages of a Thanet resident more than doubles - now that is wishful thinking.