An Englishman’s home is his castle. Or so the saying goes.

But in recent years it has become apparent there is a severe shortage of castles – decent, affordable ones at least.

The coronavirus pandemic saw house prices spike as people rushed outwards from London in search of more space and only now does that spike seem to be slowing down.

Covid brought to a head an issue that had been building for decades.

According to the Office for National Statistics, in March this year in England a home typically cost an average of 9.1 times earnings – up from 7.9 times earnings in 2020. In 1997 the figure was about 3.5.

Despite this, it remains the aim of – and to some extent the expectation – of most people in the UK to own their own home.

In response to these figures, the government yesterday unveiled a tranche of measures to try to make this a possibility.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to turn “benefits to bricks” – changing welfare rules so that the 1.5 million people who are in work but also on housing benefit will have the choice to use their benefit towards a mortgage, rather than automatically going directly to private landlords and housing associations.

The UK Government will launch a review of access to mortgage finance for first-time buyers, with the aim of making it easier to widen access to low-cost, low-deposit finance such as 5%-deposit mortgages. It will report back in the autumn.

Two-and-a-half million tenants renting their homes from housing associations will also be given the right to buy them outright.

But experts say the government announcements are unlikely to have much impact for the low-earning people it intends to benefit.

Toby Lloyd, who was former prime minister Theresa May’s housing adviser, said: “Clearly there are imperfections in the way that the mortgage market works at the moment, but fundamentally the problem is that house prices are way too high.

“That’s why there’s an affordability crisis.”

When asked whether the government’s new housing plan would have much effect, he said: “I’d be very surprised if it happens in anything like the scale they expect, and if it does I don’t expect it to have that much impact.”

So what if we all just rented, instead?

Elsewhere, it is not the case that everyone expects to own their own home. In some parts of Germany around 85% of people rent.

And for that reason, the situation is set up differently.

For example, rents tend to be lower than in the UK, utilities are almost always included and tenants have much more power including, in some cases, the ability for new tenants to sign an old contract thereby keeping the rent low.

However, even in a market where people rent there have been problems with availability.

Research conducted late last year by Homeday estate agency, found that in Berlin 17 out of 19 neighbourhoods are unaffordable to the average earner, based on “rental burden” — the amount of someone’s salary that goes on monthly rent. A rental burden of more than 40 per cent is deemed too high.

This is in part due to an end of a rental cap, but largely due to a lack of homes for rent.

So renting is not a silver bullet for the housing crisis either.

Ultimately, it seems, the issue is that not enough homes are being built.

Like it or loathe it, the only solution to the problem will be to build more.

This must be done in a way that protects the East Anglian landscapes that we all cherish so much, but it must be done.

Government changes to mortgage rules, however well-intentioned, are unlikely to make any inroads while there is such a shortage of housing stock.

In 2019, the government announced its aim was to build 300,000 new homes every year to match demand and keep housing costs affordable. It has never hit this target.

Practically all experts agree that without doing so – and making sure that a decent proportion of it is actually affordable – the housing crisis will not be solved.