Reporters: Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, John Pitman, Jack Pizzey, Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson

This week: The Impossible Dream?

In just over three years, the cost of the average house in Britain has doubled from £5,082 in June 1970 to £10,423. At the same time, the cost of a mortgage to pay for that house has rocketed from just under £32 a month to over £82 a month, before tax relief.

These are vital statistics which have shattered the dreams of millions of young married couples. Now many people who stretched themselves to buy a home of their own, three years ago, are having to lower their standard of living, sell off the family car or have the telephone taken away to pay the mortgage.

Twenty years ago Harold Macmillan said that every family in Britain was entitled to a chance to own its home and heralded the birth of Britain as a major property-owning democracy. Today that democracy is crumbling. What do the next 20 years hold?

Desmond Wilcox talks to the people in trouble; to those who believe they know the answers and to those who should know.

Shattered dreams: page 3