Opinion: Local Plan Has Left New Council With Housing Headache

Published on: 3 Jun, 2019
Updated on: 4 Jun, 2019

By Martin Giles

There is no doubt that rushing through Guildford’s Local Plan has left the new council with a major problem.  If it cannot be significantly changed, and quickly, what was the point of voting out the Conservatives?

Those who voted R4GV (Residents for Guildford and Villages) and GGG (Guildford Greenbelt Group), in particular, will feel short-changed if building goes ahead on any of the strategic green belt sites And many Lib Dem supporters might not be fans of green belt development either, even if their primary concern was showing support for the anti-Brexit movement.

There are probably even Conservative voters who, despite maintaining their party loyalty, have grave reservations about development of the green belt. After all, many R4GV and GGG voters used to vote Conservative. Traditionally, Tories claimed themselves to be the green belt guardians but in recent years the Conservative government has pressured councils in the Metropolitan Green Belt area to draw up controversial Local Plans that will allow unprecedented levels of growth and development.

Surely it won’t have escaped the notice of those at Conservative headquarters that in their very heartlands, the areas that held many of their safest seats, their planning policy is as popular as Theresa May’s Brexit deal. The unpopularity of their planning policy added to the Brexit debacle could even be an existential threat to the Tories.

Their party hierarchy might have been able to persuade some loyal council leaders, keener to please their party leaders than local residents, to promote the idea of heating up the economy of the South-east even further, through a programme of housebuilding, but eventually enough voters were bound to realise the potential damage and the infrastructure problems it would cause.

If the Tory HQ is not smelling the coffee now they must be completely detached from reality.

Of course, there are those in the Lib Dem and Labour parties who have been taken in. Their simplistic logic seems to be, there are people who want homes so we must build more homes. By building more the prices will come down and homes become more affordable.

They say we need to support the Local Plan to provide the homes for our children. It has been a consistent refrain by its supporters over the past four, or more years.

But is this true? The main problem younger generations face to purchasing their own home is price. House prices here are far higher in proportion to average wages than they were for the baby boomers and demand for houses in Guildford, just 30 miles from London, is almost insatiable. The demand curve is too vertical for prices to drop significantly.

The mistrusted OAN (objectively assessed need) figure is not just for those already in Guildford borough who want houses and, in any case, what is really needed for those on the council’s housing list is more social housing. The Lib Dems, now in charge, have said they intend a major programme of social housing but they must first explain how they will achieve this. Not only will sites need to be identified so will funding.

There are policy changes that could be made at national level. A punitive tax on empty properties and undeveloped brownfield sites could be two measures that would show real intent.

But the council cannot control central government’s legislation programme, such as it is while they are all transfixed by Brexit. Nonetheless, they do need to work out what they can do about the expected JRs of Local Plan process if they materialise and they also need to work out what they can do to deliver on their commitment of social housing delivery.

There is no point in having a new council if we get the same old policies. In fact, one could ask what is the point of having a council nominally in charge of local planning if their hands are completely tied.

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