Rampant financial inequality in the UK was a major factor behind the current housing crisis, a session at yesterday’s Ecobuild conference, part of the annual Futurebuild show at London’s Excel centre, heard.

Professor Susan Smith, mistress of Girton College and honorary professor of geography, Cambridge University, told the Housing Challenge – More Than Houses session that with some political imagination the UK could have a housing system less dependent on debt and more socially enabling.

“But successive governments have chosen to adopt the policy of ‘business as usual’. We have a crisis of affordability. Rates of attainment among young people have plummeted worldwide. And new financial schemes have failed to bridge that gap and possibly never will.”