Letter: Lib Dem Council Is Not Accepting New Housing Targets ‘Merrily’

Published on: 17 Dec, 2024
Updated on: 17 Dec, 2024

From Fiona White

Lib Dem lead councillor for Planning at GBC

In response to David Roberts’ letter: More Homes Should Not Mean Destroying Our Natural Environment, I can confirm that the Lib Dem administration at Guildford is not “going merrily along” with the government’s housing targets.

However, there is danger in ignoring them and that danger is that development will be imposed on us by central government with no local input at all.

We have decided to update the current Guildford Local Plan. I would have much preferred if we had been able to gather the evidence of housing need and for the numbers in the updated plan to be based on that need. The government has not given us time to do that.

Whatever our individual political views, it is a fact that we have a newly elected government with a big majority. Their intentions with regard to house-building were made clear in their election manifesto.

Mr Roberts is right that a lot of the properties for which planning permission has been granted have still not been built. That number was 4,885 on April 1 2024. It may have changed since then but I suggest it is probably still around the same figure.

It may even have gone up. He is also right that developers will only build when it suits their own business plans. Another issue is there are not enough skilled workers in the construction industry to build the government’s national target within the timescale they have set.

Unfortunately, local planning authorities such as Guildford do not have the powers to deal with either of those issues. They are problems that can only be resolved by central government.

I will repeat what I said when we decided to update the Local Plan and that is that we are determined to follow the hierarchy of brownfield sites first and work has already started to identify where there are suitable sites.

The [risk of] flooding along the River Wey in Guildford town needs to be addressed to release a number of those sites and we are working closely with the Environment Agency and Surrey County Council to produce an effective flood alleviation scheme for that to happen.

We are not limiting our search to the area by the river and will consider any suitable site within the urban area of Guildford.

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