BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, a roof over your head, a home of your own, an Englishman's home is his castle, there's no place like home. Our language is full of expressions celebrating the bricks and mortar of your own place, ideally bought rather than rented. And that used to be both aspirational and achievable.

In 1970, when the average salary was nearly £1,000 a year,

the average home cost £4,000.

Then came the time when you needed to borrow greater multiples of your income

for a home which one day you would own outright.

Today, though, the average UK house price is around 10 times the average annual salary. In the most expensive places, it will be more like

17 times higher. That's just the basic position, a gulf between older people and what was possible

for them and what is within the reach of younger

fellow citizens. How do we fix that to have a vision in the way that we did in the 1950s, the

time when new towns emerged? Today, mortgage costs are rising and there's a background of often

insecure private tenancies and social housing and endangered species.

The housing market is our talking point for this today debate.

Welcome to all of you in the audience. You booked without knowing what we'd be discussing.

And welcome to the five people here on the radio theatre stage who have perspectives on designing and building homes on the realities for lenders and for buyers and tenants and also expertise on policy at the local and parliamentary level. They'll be sharing all of that

over the course of the next 35 minutes. George Clark is the one with the design eye, architect, writer

and broadcaster whose Channel 4 programs include Restoration Man, the Council House scandal in 2019

and also George Clark's amazing spaces.

The technical term he has used for the housing market is screwed.

Claire Barrett is consumer editor for the Financial Times and presenter of their Money Clinic podcast.

In recent weeks, she's written about anguished messages from listeners worried that they won't

pass their lender's affordability test when the time comes to remortgage.

David Simmons is the Conservative MP for Reislip, Northwood and Pinner, and was among the MPs

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