I find it slightly disturbing to remember back to the early part of this Century and Millennium when Gordon Brown as Chancellor was roundly criticised by the Conservative Opposition for claiming that the UK needed 3M new homes to be built. This followed on from analysis carried out by an economist called Kate Barker who argued that the only way to deal with soaring cost of home ownership was to build enough homes to cope with the demand. I was then part of the South East England Regional Assembly as one of the Social, Economic and Environmental Partners. There were 38 of us who were not elected by the ballot box, but selected through a range of equally robust mechanisms to ensure that diverse views would be represented. We worked extremely hard as part of the Assembly to create what was known as the South East Plan. The plan identified where and in very broad terms what type of housing was needed around the region. It was approved by Councils around the region and they began to plan for the new homes, demanding that the infrastructure needed to make the homes part of sustainable communities be provided ahead of the homes. At the end of the process the new coalition Government came into power and in a matter of moments abolished SEERA and dissolved the plan. The plan was completed in 2008, 9 years ago and today the Tory Government is standing up and although using different words, is saying the same thing as Gordon Brown said 15 years ago, although of course now the problem is much worse. We need politicians and indeed Political Parties prepared to ignore their own short term needs and focus on the needs of society as a whole.