WHILST the media attention has been focussed on Brexit, it's easy to forget that the Conservatives have presided over nine years of failure on housing.

They have failed those who want to buy their own home.

Home-ownership is down sharply with almost 900,000 fewer households under 45 owning their home than in 2010.

A decade on, hard as it may be to believe from driving around Bicester, housebuilding still hasn't recovered to the level it was before the global financial crisis.

And the number of low-cost homes to buy being built each year has almost halved since 2010.

The Tories are failing to help renters. Locally, they failed to support a Labour motion that was aimed at protecting private tenants.

Nationally, the number of landlords renting from a private landlord has risen by over a million in less than a decade. In the South East private rents have risen by more than 28per cent, while incomes have gone up by only 10per cent

Locally, the council has gone years without building a single socially rented home. This is in perfect harmony, with the Tory record nationally, with the number of socially rented houses falling by over 80per cent, meaning that the most vulnerable have to pay even higher rents.

The number of people sleeping rough on the streets of Banbury and Bicester has risen from 0 in 2010, to 11 on any night this year.

Again, this is in line with their record nationally, with rough sleeping having more than doubled since 2010.

120,000 children are living in temporary accommodation. In our region, the number of people in housing need has risen by 99per cent.

Spending on Housing Benefit is up by £2bn a year on 2010 despite 13 separate cuts for claimants since 2010, including the Bedroom Tax.

It's time for change.

Labour in Cherwell is proposing a new deal by demanding that at least 50per cent of homes on new developments are made affordable.

We are proposing the creation of a community co-operative housing association to provide more homes at social rent, using funds in the council's reserves.

And we will protect private renters by continuing to push what was in our motion this week; a dedicated engagement forum so that they could report issues with landlords, and a landlord licensing scheme.

We will prioritise council funded schemes to local people who want to get on the housing ladder, rather than allowing homes to become investments for buy-to-let landlords.

We're also calling for a new deal at a national level. Scrapping the bogus definition of 'affordable' by linking rents to local incomes, not market prices. We'll build more social housing and improve tenants rights by scrapping 'no fault evictions'.

We will end rough sleeping and we will see to it that local first time buyers get 'first dibs' and a FirstBuy scheme

It's time to fix our broken housing market.