Letter: More Homes Should Not Mean Destroying Our Natural Environment

Published on: 14 Dec, 2024
Updated on: 13 Dec, 2024

From David Roberts

In response to: Government Confirms Doubling of Housing Target for Guildford

Will our LibDem council and MP, who have merrily gone along with a Tory Local Plan housing target, now merrily go along with Labour’s arbitrary doubling of this target? Almost certainly, since they have never been able to articulate any alternative policy whatsoever on local development matters.

In that case, they can wave goodbye to the “Blue Wall” at future elections as Tory and independent candidates exploit the mounting outrage.

The only positive thing is that these are only targets. In Soviet style, the more unrealistic they are, the less they will be met. The Prime Minister has already as good as said Labour won’t hit its 1.5 million national goal. And in the context of a UK national housing stock of 30 million, what difference would spending five years building 1.5 million new homes make to supply and prices anyway? Next to none.

We should be talking instead about building out the million unused planning permissions that already exist, filling the UK’s 600,000 vacant homes and turning run-down, town-centre commercial buildings – including Guildford’s – into thousands of flats. The Horsleys are already undergoing a 40 per cent increase in housing, while almost nothing has been built in town for decades.

Guildford’s existing Tory Local Plan target is already based on discredited and inflated ONS population projections. Brexit continues to cause labour and building materials shortages.

New-builds here in the Horsleys aren’t selling. Barratt have reduced their national building plans for next year. And eight of the biggest housebuilders are under investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority for “sharing commercially sensitive information with their competitors, which could be influencing the build-out of sites and the prices of new homes”, as the gov.uk website tactfully puts it.

The UK housing market is in a state of fundamental dysfunction, while the public and political debate remains stuck at square one, with the simplistic assertion that “we need more homes”. Whether or not that is true, providing new housing should emphatically not mean eating away at the natural environment. It’s already in dire straits but human survival depends on it.