BRITAIN’S housing market is broken. Salford and Greater Manchester illustrate the crisis. There is a massive shortage of actually affordable homes and council houses while luxury apartments are simply unaffordable, too small and not suitable for many people including families.

Our housing policy is outsourced to the likes of billionaire bookie Fred Done, who churns out build-to-rent tower blocks, monopolising landlordism on an industrial scale.

All across the city we have also seen a massive rise in homes of multiple occupancy, in which landlords cram as many tenants as possible with no regard for their welfare or living conditions.

We need an integrated housing strategy which meets ordinary people’s needs, empowers local communities and delivers good quality, genuinely affordable homes that also contribute to solving the climate emergency.

To facilitate this, the Communist Party is calling for the reintroduction of directly employed building and maintenance departments, so that jobs and apprenticeships are available to young people in local communities, with trade union rates of pay. This alone is the guarantee of quality construction.

We are also calling for repeal of the hated Bedroom Tax which can be imposed on people classed as having a spare bedroom in a council or housing association property, and a freeze on social housing rents for 12 months with rent set at rates that are genuinely in line with local incomes.

I will also be raising questions about new government-backed freeports and Port Salford. This site by the Manchester Ship Canal is part of a network of freeport industrial sites across the Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester.

Freeport policy advocates light-touch regulations and incentives for certain types of business. These policies have rightly raised concerns about workers’ rights, displacement of businesses from elsewhere, democratic influence, planning and environmental protections.

Voters must also be aware of the government’s attempts to stop them voting through compulsory production of identification documents (ID). These rules are discriminatory. Government measures for voter ID limit the number of working-class people who can vote.

Other subtle suppression is used, such as weekday voting, which has been rejected in other countries because it impacts on people who wish to vote but are unable to because of long working hours.

We need to scrap voter ID, which has led to a drop in attendance at the ballot box and a diminishing of working-class people’s participation in exercising their democratic rights, especially young people.

Another huge issue of public concern is Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the possibility of wider global conflict. In Ukraine, both the Tories and Labour support further escalation and pumping in weapons that will lead to more death and destruction. Instead, the Communist Party supports peace negotiations and a ceasefire in both Gaza and Ukraine.

Many of the issues I’m campaigning on are not just affecting people in Salford. The logical question is, how can local council elections have an impact? But local elections offer voters an opportunity to send a message to the big political parties at Westminster. On May 2 a vote for the Communist Party will allow you to send that message.

Chris Neville is a trade unionist and anti-war activist standing as a Communist Party candidate in the Weaste and Seedley ward in Salford on May 2.