Your story about Comer Homes’ attempt to restart the Ocean Views development, this time without an ‘affordable’ component, coincided with the release of annual accounts by Bovis Homes, another company that does business in Dorset.

Readers may well be aware that Bovis, along with other developers, offers the government backed Help to Buy scheme to potential homeowners.

George Osborne tells us this scheme is designed to help hard working families onto the property ladder.

In 2012/13, Bovis made about £19,000 on each house that it sold.

The average sale price was £200k. In 2013/2014, Bovis made £33,000 profit on an average sale price of £239,000. In other words, George Osborne’s Help to Buy scheme has made houses less affordable and forced his hard working families into ever increasing levels of debt.

Comer Homes should note that they have a moral and legal obligation to invest in the local community.

If they cannot do so, they should be free to sell the land at market price to somebody that will. I would be incensed if the council’s planners allowed them to dodge this responsibility.

Like the developers of Officer’s Field (where, two years after the Olympics, and despite offering Help to Buy, homes still remain unsold), they are learning that charging more for less is a double edged sword: sooner or later, you run out of buyers.

Fortunately, with today’s newspapers running stories about unexpected price drops in London, wages falling and credit tightening, the issue of afford-ability might well be resolved without any further transfer of taxpayers’ cash into the pockets of developers.

James Young
Upwey