Emma’s dream of becoming a homeowner

It has been a long-held desire of Emma’s to own her home and the prospect of a new housing development in Ambridge has put it almost within touching distance.

With its quota of affordable homes, the Bridge Farm housing plans have only made Emma long for her dream family home even more keenly. She hopes her scrapbook she is using to visualise it will help her turn that dream into reality.

Items in Emma’s scrapbook:

• We know she wants the colour of the kitchen to be Buttercup Meadow
• There is probably a pair of taupe curtains in there after she admired the ones at the Dower House

Since the end of 2015, Emma has lived at Grange Farm with her two children, her husband Ed Grundy and his family. She loves how there is space there for Keira and George to run and play. She can also call on Clarrie (and Eddie, when he’s not in The Bull) for babysitting while she’s working one of her many jobs. But it must be hard for her to feel truly settled at Grange Farm. There’s the uncertainty of being a tenant, plus it’s a four-generation household with a dog and numerous ferrets, not to mention the recent house guests through Eddie’s B&B enterprise!

As well as living with Ed’s family, Emma and Ed have also spent time living with Emma’s parents at Ambridge View. Sharing a home with this side of the family was also far from plain sailing. Keira’s mucky hands and Ed’s muddy work boots grated with house-proud Susan.

Like her mother, Emma is house-proud and she would love to put that energy into a property that is truly her own. While her mother-in-law Clarrie accepts that she will probably never own her own home, Emma doesn’t want to be resigned to the same reality. But the probability of her and Ed finding a house that they can afford is horrifyingly slim.

Susan and Neil climbed the property ladder by buying their council house in 1991 through the Right to Buy scheme and then putting the money from its sale in 2004 into a self-build project which became Ambridge View. Opportunities like those don't exist for Emma and her generation.

Emma's hopes are pinned on the Bridge Farm houses. But even if the planning permission is approved, she will still have a long way to go to get one of them secured for her and her family.