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Nurses are being priced out of homes built on land the NHS has sold off, a study reveals.

Out of 5,452 homes planned for NHS land, just 946 (17%) will be “affordable”, the New Economics Foundations says.

The average house price on NHS sites is £306,434 — 9.6 times an average nurse’s wage of £32,000.

The NEF says the Government wants to charge developers as much as possible for NHS land but that puts up house prices.

But critics claim that encourages housebuilding firms to construct expensive homes to justify their outlay - making them affordable to fewer potential buyers.

Think tank analysts calculate of the 4,506 market-rate homes proposed, only 1,485 would be affordable to a nurse on an average salary.

Even then, they would need to save for around 35 years to build up a deposit, says the Foundation.

Campaigners seized on the findings and urged the Government to build more affordable homes to tackle the chronic housing crisis.

NEF’s Hanna Wheatley said: “Finding a decent, affordable place to live is becoming harder and harder for people and families across the country.

(Image: Getty)

“A key part of this is the overinflated price of land dictating what gets built on it.

“Public land, if it must be sold, represents an opportunity to produce the kinds of homes people need, but the Government’s approach to the public land sale is a shambles.

“There is a clear tension between trying to raise as much money as possible from the land sale and also building the kind of homes we need — and right now the Government isn’t doing either.

“The one-off cash injection gained by selling land to the highest bidder is small compensation for the lost opportunity of more affordable housing, and a reduction in the housing benefit bill."

The NHS is selling land as part of the Government’s Public Land for Housing Programme, which aims to release enough land for 160,000 homes by 2020 and raise £5billion.

A recent report by Whitehall spending watchdog the National Audit Office warned ministers were on course to miss the target by nearly 100,000 homes.

The NEF study recommends introducing an ‘NHS Land community-lock’ where land sold by the NHS can only be used for community benefit.

It wants staff working for an NHS Trust to be able to purchase or rent homes on the sold-off land.

Ms Wheatley insisted the “moral and economic cases are clear - if the Government insists on privatising the ever decreasing commons of land that we all own, they must think clearly about what that land is used for, and a massive increase the supply of affordable housing should be top of the list”.

A Government spokeswoman said: "This Government is determined to make sure the housing market works for everyone.

"Since April 2010 there have been more than 400,000 affordable homes provided in England, but we're aware that more needs to be done, which is why we're investing over £9 billion in affordable housing and an additional £2billion after 2022.

"For NHS staff in particular, we announced plans to give first refusal on affordable housing schemes built on NHS land sold for development.”