An extra 35,000 homes must be built in Staffordshire and the West Midlands over the next 20 years, the Government demanded today.
Housing and planning minister Baroness Andrews has told regional planners to look again at their figures to see if they can increase the total from the proposed 365,000 to at least 400,000 new homes.
Stafford had already been identified as one of two sectors of significant development in the county and had been told to plan for 12,900 new homes by 2026.
Now it may face pressure to find space for even more in the borough. The demand has raised concerns about further building in the green belt, together with more ‘back-building’ in which large homes are demolished to create new estates and flats.
It comes as Gordon Brown pledged to provide three million affordable houses in the UK over the next 20 years.
Baroness Andrews has written to local authority chiefs on the West Midlands Regional Assembly expressing concern about the housing proposals put forward in a revised draft of the region’s spatial strategy.
She has asked the Government Office of the West Midlands to come up with new proposals which could deliver higher housing numbers.
This is despite the regional assembly’s argument that its proposals represented “an ambitious growth strategy” for the region and an attempt to produce sustainable development and growth in both urban and rural areas.
Stafford Borough Council leaders are calling for the borough to be given extra Government funding to cope with new building and for new inrastucture.
Cabinet member for planning and regeneration Councillor Doug Davis says that this will need to be built into the new local development framework for the borough currently under preparation.
Councillor Rex Roberts, of Cannock, chairman of the assembly’s regional planning partnership, said he was disappointed with the Government’s position.
“While we recognise the need to improve housing affordability, it is important that we do not fall into the trap of a simple numbers game,” he said.
“This could lead to the worst of all worlds if more greenfield sites are released and efforts to regenerate brownfield land and derelict sites is diverted such that the overall urban and rural renaissance agenda is undermined.”
5 Comments
Surely the answer is not only to build more houses but to fill the empty ones? there are plenty of houses to rent in Estate agents, however the people who need to rent IE people on benefits can’t because the estate agents won’t deal with Council Benefit’s and the private rents are more or less the same as a mortgage repayment, so why doesn’t the government penalise people for having empty houses?
Presumably the recipients of much of this extra house building activity will be the same people who have been the recipients of most of the new jobs our this government has ‘created’ (and which also explains why we will soon have the dubious distinction of having highest population density in Europe).
Answers on a postcode, please…
TO COPE WITH THE NEXT WAVE ? LET’S GUESS : UKRAINE ? KOSOVO ? MACEDONIA ? BELARUS ? TO DO THE JOBS (CF THE CONSERVATIVES PROPOSALS OF THREE REFUSED OFFERS AT ANY WAGE = THREE STRIKES OUT AND NO DOLE MONEY ) CHEAPER THAN THE POLISH ? MY GRANNY SAID WE ARE ALL GOD’S CHILDREN.THE PROBLEM BEING HE HAS GOT RATHER A LOT. JUST A COMMENT THAT CREWE ISN’T FAR FROM STAFFORD AND IS SAID TO HAVE 30% POLES.I USED TO LIVE NEARBY.ONCE AGAIN : NEXT MEETING IN FIVE YEARS TIME.
Why to we just keep building more and more house, Britain will soon be a concrete land instead of lovely green fields that we are well known for. Why don/t politicians look at the influx of people coming into the country and try cutting this down.
NO MORE IMMIGRANTS. CLOSE THE GATES WE”RE FULL. I bought my house in the country because of the view. The government obviously sees fit that I should no longer be aloud that luxury.