Mr. John McCarthy:

I did not want to present it as a case of either-or. When I was talking about some places where local authorities have access to cheaper acquisitions that was just in terms of their relative share of the activity because those opportunities would present. When I think of my own town - and other parts of rural areas - where there would be a fair amount of vacant properties in the centre, it would make sense from a town regeneration point of view, apart at all from the point of view of meeting a social housing need. We would be quite supportive of local authorities in that regard. In many cases they would be properties that might have been on sale for a significant period and there was no market for them. For example, our buy-and-renew programme is targeted at town centres, particularly in the context of properties that probably nobody else is going to buy which we do up even if there is a site further out on the fringe of a town. The latter might be for the next phase of activity. The national planning framework refers to trying to build up the core. We are not be in any saying that it should be either-or. If local authorities come forward looking to do both and it made sense then we would support that.