Where are all the new homes to go?

Courier Countryside Column  27^th December

With Housing Developments, Small  is beautiful

Everywhere you go people are talking about housing. Or rather the lack of it. And  here in the countryside we have a particular problem.

National statistics show we need a quarter of a million new homes a year just to meet the projected number of new households. Last year we started fewer than half that number.

In Kent we should be building some 10,000 houses a year to meet requirements. In our borough, Tunbridge Wells, that translates to about 500 new-builds. In my ward it’s around 30. 

Which doesn’t seem too bad.  Except that it means 30 new houses built EVERY year for the next 13 years. Nearly 400 brand new houses by 2026.  And the question, of course, is where on earth are they going to go?

All this provides the context in which we, on Parish Councils’ planning committees, watch applications for new homes going through the process.  To start with there are extraordinarily few of them.  But those that do come forward meet a double obstacle: the Borough planning authority and the power of the big developers for whom economies of scale (aka profits) mean favouring mass projects.

I know planners are constrained by national rules and regulations but at times I feel they instinctively reject rather than seek to support small projects. A while back we passed a proposal for a barn conversion.  It would have improved a dilapidated and unlovely structure and provided a new home on the edge of an existing hamlet.  The planning department turned it down as it would be “within the countryside” and “contrary to the spatial strategy” of the Borough. 

The trouble is that most new dwellings are immediately ruled out because the whole parish is in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.  But then so is Hawkhurst where plans to build 120 homes on entirely greenfield land are being appealed by the developer.  The Parish Council there believes that they could easily accommodate plenty of new-builds largely on brownfield land if they were dotted about the village.  No one wants an entire valley turned into a new housing estate.  Except the developers.  Who have considerable lobbying power.

So, we need new homes.  We prefer small-scale brownfield developments. But they are often – or even usually – turned down.  Instead we’re likely to end up with more fields concreted over. Which we don’t want. There’s something badly wrong with the system.