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Just one in five nurses can afford a home built on former hospital sites under a Government land sale scheme, shock research reveals today.

The average price of a home constructed on ex-NHS property is 10 times the amount a nurse earns, according to a damning report seen by the Mirror.

Even when they can afford the repayments, dedicated health workers would have to save for half a century to scrape together money for the deposit, the study shows.

The revelation blows apart Tory claims public land is being freed up to ease the housing crisis gripping the country and help struggling families get on the property ladder.

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Cash-strapped trusts have been flogging off sites for housing developments in a bid to plug gaping financial black holes.

But hard-up staff will struggle to live in the houses being constructed, according to the New Economics Foundation think tank.

It warns: “The sale of NHS land is fundamentally failing to produce the affordable homes we need, and is in fact exacerbating the current deep affordability crisis across the UK.

“By failing to use the land to meet the vast and growing un-met need for decent, affordable homes, the Government is dramatically failing in its mission to ‘fix our broken housing market’.

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“Public land could be key to solving the housing crisis, but instead is being used for more unaffordable homes which line the pockets of developers.”

The average expected sale price for the new homes built on NHS land, based on area estimates, is £315,279 - about 10 times a nurse’s annual salary.

Affordability is defined as being 45% or less of a worker’s take-home pay.

A total of 59 sites have been reported sold by the NHS as part of the Government’s public land sale programme.

Researchers pointed to the sale of the Bucknall Hospital site in Stoke-on-Trent where 201, two to four bedroom houses are being built.

Not a single one will be classed as affordable.

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On the site of Castle Hill House, a former NHS residential care home in Dorset, 36, one to two bedroom luxury homes are being sold “off plan”, with none deemed affordable.

In West Yorks, where Pontefract General Infirmary once stood, just seven homes on a 124-plot development will be affordable.

Eighty per cent of the homes built on former NHS land are for sale rather than available for rent - the vast majority of which are out of the reach of NHS workers.

The other 20% of houses proposed are classified as affordable, but only half are for genuinely affordable social rent, according to the NEF.

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If a nurse was trying to buy rather than rent, even if they could afford the mortgage payments they would have to save for an average of 53 years for a deposit.

A total of 91% of the planned homes would be out of reach of clinical staff - and those who could meet mortgage payments would have to save for 58 years for a deposit.

Four fifths of the proposed homes would be unaffordable to ambulance staff, with the lucky 20% having to save for 50 years for a deposit.

New Economics Foundation housing spokesman Joe Beswick said: “These local NHS sites are community assets – they should be used to deliver community benefits.

“Public land – which is owned by all of us – is being flogged off to developers so that they can make massive profits, while producing a tiny amount of affordable housing.

“The UK is facing an enormous housing crisis, and the Government is making it worse.

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“Every day, people are finding it harder and harder to find a decent, affordable place to live.

“Surplus public land could be used to start to solve this problem.”

He added: “By selling off public land to the highest bidder, the Government is missing a chance to start solving the housing crisis.

“Surplus public land should be put into a ‘People’s Land Bank’ - a national stock of land earmarked for genuinely affordable housing.

“The Government should stop using national assets to line the pockets of developers, and instead put public land to public use.”