06/07/2014 Midlands Today

The Shadow Housing Minister and Wolverhampton MP Emma Reynolds

says the country is in a housing crisis, with just half the

But the Government says house building is at its highest level

since 2007, with more investment in affordable homes.

Lizz Wright plays house with her young daughter.

Affording a real home is something of a fairy tale.

We saved as much as possible, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere.

We were dipping into the savings with birthdays and

Christmases, and we were sort of moving at a snail's pace, really.

So Lizz and her family have given up renting, and moved back home

with her parents in Birmingham to save for a deposit.

Lizz wants to live here in the Kings Heath area of Birmingham, where

a three`bedroom house can cost up to a quarter of a million pounds.

Getting on the property ladder isn't cheap.

In recent years house prices in the West Midlands have risen by 56%.

According to the National Housing Federation,

the average deposit needed is ?35,000, with the average house

Speaking on the Sunday Politics, the Shadow Housing Minister said

the country was in the midst of a housing crisis.

We're not even building half the number of homes that we need to keep

up with demand, and actually there's been decades now of under`supply

of housing, but unfortunately under this Government they've presided

over the lowest level of house building since the 1920s.

We've had 450,000 new homes built in the last four years,

If you talk to builders right now, they're operating flat out.

The building of new homes and estates is often proving to be

For the Wright family, the drive for more affordable homes

Eight men have been bailed following a disturbance

in Birmingham which ended with the death of a young father.

28`year`old Ikram Elahi died from a stab wound in the Sparkbrook area

Four men arrested on suspicion of attempted murder

and violent disorder have been banned from entering the city.

Two other men arrested on suspicion of murder have yet to be questioned,

as they are receiving medical treatment.

A man has died in a crash which closed part of the M6 motorway

The accident involving a car and a lorry happened just

The dead man was a passenger in the car.

The drivers of both vehicles received hospital treatment,

68 years ago today the very first tractor rolled off the production

line at Massey Ferguson's Banner Lane factory in Coventry.

The plant went on to produce nearly 3.5 million tractors,

becoming the biggest in the western world, but until today there were no

Today was about remembering what was once one of the Midlands if not UK's

important factories ` Massey Ferguson's Banner Lane plant.

This day in 1946 the first Little Grey Fergie, or TE20,

It was all made possible by this man, Harry Ferguson,

It signifies brilliant engineering, a British tradition

And it all happened here, at Banner Lane in Coventry.

The administration headquarters were razed to the ground two years ago,

removing all traces of what was the western world's

Today it's quite hard to believe that

at one time nearly 10,000 people worked on this site, producing up to

Ted Everett was an official photographer for

Massey's, starting there in 1952, and behind him the last tractor to

Sometimes when I did visits with people, showing them round

the factory, if you did a full stint of walking it was just

I always came out with a smile on my face,

with the atmosphere and the little bit of bantering and good humour.

These days Massey's is owned by AGCO, an American firm who

shifted production to France ` although they do still employ 500

A memorial to two Staffordshire police officers has been unveiled

The window at the force's boxing gym in Cobridge honours PC David Beech,

who died in a fire at his home in Tunstall earlier this year,

and PC David Rathband, who was shot in the face and blinded

by gunman Raoul Moat in 2010. sense of family and

Tennis, and Halesowen's Jordanne Whiley has

The 22`year`old partnered Yui Kamiji from Japan to victory

in the wheelchair women's doubles final, beating their Dutch opponents

It's their third Grand Slam victory this year, having also won the

Let's get the weather forecast now, from Charlie Slater.

A relatively bright end to the weekend, I'm pleased to say,

with a decent sunny spell here and there and a few showers thrown

As we go into the early hours you will see a few showers,

particularly in these western parts of the West Midlands; otherwise it

To start us off with on Monday then, a scattering of showers,

then it's going to be mainly dry through the middle part of the day

Having said that, though, there will be a few showers around every corner

as we continue our way through Monday, and a showery and a sunshine

theme is something that will continue through the working week.

Hello again. Today's big event was certainly blessed by fine weather,

but there has been some rain around here and there. Those showers will

continue to drift further east over the next few hours, but by and

large, they should become more confined to western