Homes for All?

-->

Published in Kent and Sussex Courier February  2013

"Time for Change, just not around here"

Guy sat next to me at the public meeting.  He’s lived in the village as long as I can recall - 40 years at least – but a recent divorce means he has to sell up. Too old for a new mortgage and, with commercial rents unaffordable, he faces homelessness. So the debate on building six affordable houses was of keen interest.

Nothing is more contentious for Parish Councils like mine than planning. Few people enthusiastically embrace change, fewer still like new building and in this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, development is invariably opposed.

But there is a crying need for rural housing.  Moneyed incomers have been displacing locals for decades. The few council houses have been sold, and any social housing is massively oversubscribed.  Few young people can afford to stay.

The audience listens to the Housing Association outline the proposed development. It’s on a green field at the edge of the village, next to existing social housing.  It will cover half of an attractive meadow, but beyond is uninterrupted countryside for miles. Reluctant publically to oppose homes for those in need, opponents concentrate on design, traffic and infrastructure. Supporters outline current overcrowding and the importance of enabling families to remain in their native village.

The council stays neutral since it owns the development land.  But silently I rehearse points I might have made. The ribbon development of ugly bungalows permitted in the middle of the last century. Loss of local agricultural work as farming changed. Tied cottages sold off to incomers. Two village shops and the pub closed in my lifetime.  Some regrettable, some unavoidable, but all down to the march of time.  Had every previous generation stood Canute-like protecting this green and pleasant corner, the homes most of the protesters inhabit would never have been built.

I want to preserve the countryside too.  I love my woods and streams and fields and hedges, but I recognise how lucky I am to have them and don’t feel I should repel all others who want to live here too.

Leaving the meeting, one opponent who’d moved to the village just a few years ago, was overheard saying it wasn’t building they were against, it was the sort of people social housing would attract. “We came here to get away from these people.  If they come here we might have to move out.”  Guy didn’t say anything but I knew exactly what he was thinking.