Housing was briefly discussed in the post about flooding. Housing developments on green fields increase the risk of flooding, often in the town centre further down the hill.
Who is responsible for what?
Approval of individual housing developments is the responsibility of District Council, but the County Council that I am standing for has responsibility for flood management and strategic development. As a county councillor, I would push for the greatest possible oversight of housing developments from the point of view of flooding and climate change mitigation.
Replacing fields on the hills around a town or village with acres of buildings and tarmac is a recipe to bring floodwater flowing down the high street and through homes in a downpour.
County Council also oversees transport, which also includes the footpath & cycle links and crossings needed to make new developments safe for residents and prevent developments from being isolated blocks cut off from town. We believe you shouldn’t need a car to live a full life. I am personally impressed by how our current District councillors are assessing planning applications; they are taking all the things I believe to be important into account. However they are currently being asked to assess development applications that have inadequate footpath links, but are told that this is not a legitimate reason to reject them.
The precise division of responsibilities confuses councillors, let alone voters, but let’s just say that there are many things that County Council can do through its outline planning approvals to ensure that the houses that get built are appropriate to the community.
The overall housing need vs what is being built
We will all have seen large developments of new houses appearing on greenfield sites in the area.
Green Party policy is to strengthen protections given to the Green Belt, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites of Specific Interest. We favour renovation, repurposing, small-scale developments and brownfield sites as much as possible – although ‘brownfield’ is a tricky definition and some of these sites can be sensitive in their own ways.
New development on Wyaston Rd, Ashbourne
Derbyshire’s population is not increasing by much. Data reported by Derbyshire Observatory shows that the Derbyshire Dales district only added 591 people between 2012 and 2018, all of whom could be accommodated by any one of the numerous developments we’ve all seen springing up around our towns and villages – or indeed the houses that are currently sitting empty. The rate of population growth is not expected to increase, indeed with the local economy in decline (see my post on that) it seems likely that a static or declining population is on the cards. Finally, if our average age is increasing and our average wealth is falling, why are most of these new houses so huge? Who are these houses for?
There is nothing wrong with wanting or needing a larger home; the problem is that there is insufficient supply of good-quality smaller homes for those of us that want them.
Housebuilders can profit more from large houses. A 4-bedroom house can be sold for around twice as much as a 2-bedroom house, but it doesn’t cost twice as much to build. A development of a few large homes takes fewer buyers off the market than a lot of small homes, so the last houses to sell can still go for almost as much as the first ones. Finally the housebuilders are after as much of our money as possible, so want to constrain our options to the high end of the market. Houses are not being built according to what we need or want, but according to formulas used by the developers to maximise how much profit they can make from us.
All this is perfectly rational for the housebuilders – but councils and government don’t have to let them have it all their own way. Green Party policy is to give councils the power to set their own housing targets, and to strike the right balance between local housing need and the need to preserve the local environment.
It is also policy to fund councils to deliver additional social housing in their area (over 100,000 new homes a year nationally) through sustainable construction, renovation and conversion, and to improve and insulate existing homes (over 1 million homes a year).
In the absence of these national policies, as a Green County councillor I will do what I can to bring about as much of that as I can. Strategic planning and outline approvals at County Council level has significant influence on the types of developments that appear in our communities.
Promoted by JOHN HILL, 103 MAYFIELD ROAD, ASHBOURNE, DE6 1AS on behalf of the GREEN PARTY, The Biscuit Factory A Block (201), 100 Clements Road, London, SE16 4DG