NEWS that £28,000 paid over by a housing company in Addingham to provide low cost housing four years ago has not yet been spent will come as no surprise to anybody. The money was handed over by Redrow Homes (Yorkshire) as a condition of being granted planning permission to build an executive housing development on Skipton Road in 1998.

Under planning regulations, companies are allowed to hand over 'commuted sums' of cash for affordable housing instead of having to provide the homes themselves to sell or lease to housing associations.

However, no-one explained sufficiently at the time how the £28,000 was supposed to provide low cost housing, while the Redrow Homes were eagerly snapped by those fortunate enough to be able to afford them for around ten times that sum. In four years the housing market in Addingham has become even more prohibitive, making Redrow's donation to community cohesion seem even more puny.

Of course, those in power will tell you how complicated the system of providing lower cost housing is; involving housing associations, developers, local councils and central Government agencies and regulations. Actually it isn't as complicated as many would have us believe, but it needs a great deal of political will and financial backing.

If the money was not going to be used in any meaningful way why bother asking for it in the first place? For the developer the cash was an addition to its per unit costs, for Bradford Council it was, and still is, an unused asset, but for those growing up in the village who are only to well aware their children will not enjoy the same privilege, it remains a symbol of despair and abject surrender to the cult of mammon.