DESPITE the atrocious weather, it’s holiday time. The kids have returned home from university, under-nourished with piles of washing and tales of crazy shenanigans, usually involving shopping trolleys and several pints of lager.

Much as you love to see them for the first couple of weeks, the question that often niggles is; are they ever going to leave home for good?

The Boomerang Generation – children moving back in with parents after having left home – is on the rise.

With youngsters returning home after being at university as they cannot afford to get on to the property ladder, continuing house price and interest rate rises, living at home at the age of 30 plus is no longer an embarrassing thing to admit.

I remember visiting a friend who lived with his mother a few years ago with my daughter who was seven and in that annoying stage of asking endless questions.

With the natural self-effacing ability all children possess, my daughter asked him what to her was a puzzling question: "If you’re 41, why do you still live with your mum?"

My friend has moved out now and I can tell by the creases in his shirt he desperately misses his mum, but he’s enjoying his first taste of true independence, even though it’s hurting every month to pay the mortgage.

The Boomerang Generation is largely attributed to increasing house prices, and as interest rates continue to rise, first-time buyers are feeling the pinch even more. With a change in PM and housing ear-marked as one of the Government’s priorities, it is hoped that the affordability issue might finally be addressed.

Mr Brown has said the Government would tackle the shortage of affordable homes through the combination of a new house-building programme and forms of finance such as 20-year fixed rate mortgages.

He said the Government would be releasing unused public land for house building, but emphasised that the planning process also needed to be speeded up.

Kent is undergoing a huge amount of re-development. The massive Thames Gateway regeneration as well as the Rochester Riverside project, a 74-acre brownfield site that will include housing, offices, shops bars and restaurants, will incorporate a mix of affordable housing and if the Government’s targets of building an additional 240,000 homes a year are met, hopefully the Boomerang Generation might just bounce out of their parents’ place and into a home of their own.