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Grimsby is not immune to the nationwide housing shortage, but there is optimism in the air

By Adele Robinson, Business Correspondent

Grimsby is not immune to the nationwide housing shortage.

It is also not immune to the crisis of supply and demand on the rental property market.

At the city’s “stay and play” club for parents, everyone agrees.

“It’s completely unprofitable, whether you rent or buy,” Holly Jagger tells me, as her children scream and laugh behind her.

“Rent is around £750-£1,000 a month.”

It’s not cheap for Grimsby – or Holly.

She’s 21, has a two-year-old daughter, and lives at home with her mother. She’s saving with her fiancé to buy a house.

“My partner will probably be able to lease a car in about a year and a half because it will probably be paid off by then,” says Holly.

“But it’s like finding some cheap place.”

Holly welcomes the government’s promise to build more homes, cheaper and faster. This should mean more affordable homes and more choice.

Most of my interlocutors are full of hope and optimism, even though the new government has only been in place for two weeks.

In the newly built housing estate – just around the corner – excavators are finishing the last plots.

It took us six years to get to this point.

Real estate developer Kevin Stevens of E5 Holdings AG believes government involvement in reforming planning laws will be helpful.

But there is a catch.

He describes planning reform as “only part of it”.

“It’s all well and good that you can get planning permission to build 1.5 million homes or something like that – but you have to actually deliver them,” he says.

“To do that, you have to build them, and that requires the construction industry, and then you have to have the right amount of skilled craftsmen.”