This week the Conserva-tive Party's leadership has resisted the temptation to offer its conference the promise of tax cuts in the event of Labour losing power at the next general election.

Instead, under its new logo of a Greenwood tree, David Cameron and his merry men have emphasised the importance of economic stability, low inflation and interest rates.

Although that does not make for an exciting campaigning strategy (Labour is saying the same sort of thing), most homeowners are anxious for reassurance. According to one national newspaper earlier this week, if the Bank of England puts up interest rates by another quarter of one per cent up to a million people could find themselves bankrupt.

Members of Parliament of whatever political colour or logo know only too well that Britain's economy has been built upon three pillars: relative economic stability, house prices and consumer spending. The last two factors are related: people have been borrowing more to buy more using the rising value of their homes as equity.

During the last Conservative administration, when the economy was reacting to the shock of the European Exchange Rate fiasco and soaring interest rates, many homeowners experienced the horror of negative equity - the value of their property falling below the amount still owing to their mortgage lender.

Pundits say it was that miscalculation, which cost the Exchequer and the country billions, that resulted in Labour's 1997 General Election landslide victory: hence the caution of David Cameron.

For a local view, Councillor Kris Hopkins, leader of Bradford Council and, significantly, chairman of Yorkshire and Humberside regional housing board, said: "As a Conservative I believe that giving more people the opportunity to have a place of their own is an issue of social justice. However, getting a foot on the housing ladder has become increasingly difficult.

"There is now an urgent need for more affordable, attractive, eco-friendly new homes, together with a mechanism to allow local people more of a say in where they are built."

Political considerations aside, however, dramatic and rapid house price growth is proving to be a double-edged sword for home owners in the region according to a report called Yorkshire and Humberside's Housing Timebomb: Affordability and Supply 2006-2011.

The report, by the national Housing Federation, the Chartered Institute of Housing and The Yorkshire and Humberside Housing Forum, warns that while higher house prices will benefit existing home owners and have a concomitant boosting effect on the economy, the speed of the rise threatens to exclude ever more people from getting a foot on the home ownership ladder.

The report calls on the Government to financially support the delivery of up to 5,000 new affordable homes a year to prevent the region's housing crisis from deepening.

For more than 30 years Bradford has been a low pay area; people have managed to get by reasonably comfortably because - until the recent hefty hikes in power bills and council tax - the city has also had a low cost of living.

The economic dynamic is changing and although the report's findings make for grim reading, imaginative steps are being taken by Bradford Community Housing Trust, which manages some 23,000 properties, to offer people properties they can afford.

Trust chief executive Geraldine Howley said: "Now that we are a housing association we can build new properties and offer them to people at affordable prices or rents.

"Together with Manningham Housing Association we have built new mixed community flats and houses - for families and single people - in Haworth Road, Heaton. It also has a new community centre there.

"We are already on with a scheme at Bierley to build 100 new houses - 30 for rent, 70 to buy - under our Home Buy scheme. These properties are aimed at key workers - nurses, teachers - who are just starting out and maybe don't earn enough for a full mortgage.

"Because we own the land we are able to build the houses more economically and allow people to raise a mortgage at only a fraction of the value of the property. As they earn more they can pay more. The scheme allows people who cannot quite afford a full mortgage to get one."

Bradford Community Housing Trust also has the walk-up flats on Green Lane, off Lumb Lane, in its sites for radical improvement, which could give that run-down area the boost it needs.

Over the next two years the trust intends to build at least 200 new properties - not enough to make up for the 600 it loses every year under the Right to Buy scheme, but better than nothing. For many years local authorities were not allowed to build new homes.

That wasn't the beginning of Bradford's housing problem, but it did not help a city with a burgeoning population.

Geraldine Howley added: "What the Government can do is invest more in affordable housing. We are supplying information to the Government about what is required. We are saying we need more of it. We also want to expand our role to help people with debt problems, help them get into apprenticeships and generally improve their quality of life.

"And for those who pay their rent in good time with no other issues, we offer TLC: a Trust Loyalty Card that gives discounts at shops and lower admission to Bradford Bulls. The scheme is being piloted at the moment, but we hope to roll it out across the district next year."

But what is the average cost of this affordable housing? For Bradford Housing Trust flats weekly rents range from £45 to £53 a week for flats and houses.

At £53 a week the monthly cost is far lower than anyone could hope to pay for renting a house in the private sector. No wonder the demand for rented public sector housing is reportedly proving to be greater in some areas like the Wharfe Valley than the demand for home ownership.



FACTFILE
l The average house price in 2005 in Bradford was £122,927.

l The average house price in Yorkshire and Humberside last year was £138,948 - more than double the average of £68,557 in 2000.

l The gross annual income needed for a mortgage in Bradford is estimated to be £33,366. In 2005 the actual average income for Bradford was £19,676.

l House prices throughout the region have risen much faster than in England as a whole - 102 per cent to 74 per cent in 2000.

l Housing waiting lists in Yorkshire and Humberside increased from 197,646 households in 2004 to 227,430 last year.

l In 2005 only 14,187 new homes were built in the region, of which 869 were affordable homes for purchase on the open market.

l More than 10,500 affordable homes were purchased under the Government's Right to Buy scheme in 2005.

l By 2011 the National Housing Federation forecasts that the average house price in the region will be £220,000.

Facts and figures from the National Housing Federation which represents 1,400 not-for-profit independent housing associations which together provide two million homes for about five million people in England.