Letter: There Will Be No Faith In SHMA Figures Until Calculation Method Is Shown

Published on: 26 Mar, 2016
Updated on: 26 Mar, 2016

From Jim Allen

Cllr Parker, in her opinion piece: This Crucial Decision on Housing Must Be Scrutinised, calls for the housing target contained in the Strategic Housing Market Assessment, or SHMA, to be scrutinised. I agree.

New houses create new demands. As I have previously stated, the apparent sewage capacity of the borough is just 4,000 extra homes but the new target would result in an extra 13,000+ over the next 20 years.

That number of new homes will mean an extra 25,000 extra cars – just what our clogged roads need.

The anticipated population growth for the borough is 35,000 but the number of new jobs just 8,000. Surely a mistake somewhere, but anyway where will all these new jobs be located?

And as for the environmental impact of all this expansion, the increases in Mono Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) are, worryingly, unknown but bound to be significant.

So yes, of course, we should be able to scrutinise the housing numbers and the rationale behind them.

There will always be suspicions about figures produced by calculations we are not allowed to see.

If someone said they could turn lead into gold the method would have to be published and the process reliably repeated before it was believed.

One could say fitting another 14,000 houses into our 89 per cent green belt borough, without wrecking it, would be an equally surprising achievement.

I will have no faith in the SHMA figures until the workings are published and understood. Neither should our councillors.

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