THE hoopla around Brexit serves as a reminder that the normal business of Government rumbles at slightly slower than glacial pace.

One piece of policy is currently lurking in the no-man’s land that is consultation, being somewhat drowned out by the 28-piece marching band and accompanying circus that is Brexit.

It is a paper entitled Fixing Broken Housing Market.

Successive years of Government policy have meddled, tinkered on the sidelines and messed around with funding, which has brought us to the point where we don’t have enough houses, we don’t have the right houses, we don’t have the right houses in the right place and we haven’t any money to address any of these problems.

Add to this the spiralling price of land, a brain drain in the planning profession and 'Nimbys' with assorted placards, and we have a perfect storm.

And there's nowhere to shelter from it.

The Government’s paper is long on rhetoric.

It agrees there is a problem and wants to fix it and goes into a lot of detail about what is wrong but it is very short on ideas to help.

There are hints.

For example, green field land might be the answer as might different taxation formulas or using brownfield sites, none of which are particularly new. What the paper does not admit, however, is that years of failure by Governments of all colours to address the fundamental issues in housing have now reached a critical point with ever increasing numbers of the workforce unable to buy and in some cases afford rent.

The other thing the paper completely fails to get a grip of is that this is not a national problem.

Housing is a national problem but the problems differ from region to region and the solution in one will be the problem in another.

The time has come for root and branch reform of Government policy, which looks at the planning system, land, social housing, the ageing population, land economics and the role of the public and private sectors in land provision.

The newly-elected mayors should have a role to play and it is in the interests of the North of England to speak with one voice to ensure future housing policy is not London-centric.

Above all, something must be done as the current stalemate is not an option.

Rachel Anderson is head of policy and representation at the North East England Chamber of Commerce